Michal Wojcik answers to some questions as a trainer in Armenia

Do you enjoy teaching us?

I am not teaching you. I don’t like to be a teacher. I didn’t like teachers when I was at school. I prefer to be more like a facilitator, a trainer. A person who is helping you, leading a group in order to achieve our common result of the workshops.

At our workshops we have plenty of interesting people. They are skilled and they have a lot of experience. My task and my wish is to discover your potential, your experience. I like bringing people together and make with them something interesting.

I prefer workshops to be action oriented. This what we do here is not a school. It is non-formal education, which in my opinion is as important as university.

I enjoy my group here very much. Because despite of technical problems and acoustic in the room we manage to work together.

Do you enjoy being in Armenia?

Yes, very much. I must say that when I came here for the first time in October 2008 I didn’t have this very special positive feeling about Armenia. I liked it, but it was nothing very special for me.

Now, I had more time to observe, discover and get to know more about this country. And I am very much interested. I perceive Hrant and all of the Armenian participants as my friends. And I would like to be in touch with them and work with them together in the future. Armenia became the 4th country that I have very close in my heart (after Poland, Ukraine and Georgia). I will surely come back here for sure.

What was your motivation for being a trainer?

I wanted to try to be a trainer in our crossmedia module of workshops. I wanted to re-design this workshops. But this was not my biggest motivation. My biggest motivation was to come to
Armenia and discover it once again. And to work again with people from many countries. I haven’t done it since September 2011.

It is very funny and interesting to observe different people at the workshops. Some of them are very motivated. Some of them are really bored. Some of them are serious while the others behave like kids. This makes me happy, because I like difficult challenges.

What do you expect from the course?

When you live in Poland you don’t go to Armenia to learn how to make a video or write an online article. You’d better go to some school of journalism and learn it. We came here for a completely different aim. I expect each of you will understand it and discover his/ her aim. It will be the best result of my seminar.

Would you be a trainer again?

It depends on the results of this workshops and the feedback from the group. I don’t like polite feedback from the people. I prefer sincere, true and fair comments. To be a trainer is not easy. And at the end of the workshops you feel exhausted. But after some time you want to do it again.

Yes, I will be a trainer again. I like to work with people from other countries. This is my profession as I have a master degree in international relations and political science studies.

I would like to come each year to different part of Europe to make such workshops like we do today. And maybe next time I will make it in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Croatia. This is my wish for now.