MIKE SCHILDERS

My Youth Summit experiences

We first met the people from Finland at Helsinki airport. We played some games, because our plane had a delay. It was fun to have conversations with them. When we arrived at Mumbai airport, I was overwhelmed because of the heat. We walked about a hundred meters to the bus and I was really wet, because of the sweat.

We went by bus to Campion School through the dense traffic in Mumbai. Everywhere I saw cabs and many other cars. I looked a big chaos, but everything went well. When we arrived at Campion School we had a great welcome. We talked with some students and it was really interesting to exchange culture. The other days in Mumbai we became good friends with the students of Campion School and the activities we did were great. When we arrived at Panchgani we had a long trip by bus, but we saw beautiful hills with waterfalls and other things like monkeys.

We went to the camp. We met the other students from Goa. We had some activities to learn their names and to know them better. The next day our programme started. We had AOL (art of living). It started so early, so we all were very tired. But I think I learned a lot of AOL. Almost everyday we had a nature trail, we went in the forest and we saw beautiful bugs and butterflies. The guides were very good, they knew many things about the environment. We also worked at our projects. Our group was very interested in water utilisation. We worked very well and we became very good friends.

Peter I want to thank you for the guided tour at the plateau, the village and for the lunch at St. Peter’s School. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.

The trip with the cap was very nice. We also went to the village, we met a little school and we went to the rice fields. It was very interesting. The Abel Foundation were great people and they really love nature. My complements for how the organised the programme. Finally we had the declaration day. We did our presentation and late in the evening we had our declaration. We discussed about global warming, climate change and what we can do against it.

Here we worked for all the week and then suddenly it was over. The next day we went to the beautiful waterfalls. We had to say goodbye to our friends from Campion School and from the students of Goa. I still miss them. It were great people, we had a lot of fun and we learned a lot. But we still keep in touch with facebook. I liked the food, sometimes it was very spicy for me. We ate a lot of rice and vegetables. Everything was a great experience. When I graduate I think I come back to India. I’m not sure about that but if I can I will, because I had a really great time.