Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Summer Institute

Bellow you will find my Diary about BFTF, please feel free to discover a brief description about what was this program for me. Enjoy!

Overview of the Program

The Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative is in its sixth year. BFTF will welcome the 2011 fellows in July.   Three groups have previously visited Wake Forest Campus; In 2009  we had a reunion at the American University of Bulgaria.

The Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative offers opportunities designed to foster relationships among youth from Europeans and American in order to advance links and awareness of shared values, encounter principles of freedom and cooperation as challenges of the global 21^st Century.

Inspiring the Institutes is American statesman and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin, who prized religious tolerance over intolerance, social mobility over class privilege, and was a firm believer in free speech.

We seek an environment that encourages individual expression, communications, and information sharing in an effort to advance positive relationships among the various ethnic, religious, and national groups.

BFTF Moldova

Location in the US

Wake Forest University, North Carolina

“BFTF = Best Friends Together Forever”

It all started with a dream, and that dream was like the rainbow in a fairytale, when 48 talented students from 38 European countries and 10 youngsters from the U.S. met to tie their destinies together in a wave of friendship, knowledge and discovery at the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Summer Institute 2010.

Each one of us was a sweet, cute, smart, funny, amazing, unique, responsible page of the BFTF book: a book of wisdom, and a spring of inspiration.

A book that united us in one month unforgettable experience where we learned at hyper innovative lectures of our speakers from Wake Forrest University and from American Press Association about Diplomacy, Constitutionalism, Free Press, Media Literacy, Citizenship Issues, Economic Globalization, Community Advocacy and World Media, this delight was mixed with several impressive trips to U.S Department of State, Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Voice of America, Washington Post, News museum, Washington Center, embassies of our countries in Washington D.C.

One of the warmest memories is coziest host stay ever in Fisher family, me and Matej from Slovenia, my host-mate acquired 9 days of wonderful and warm welcome from all Greg’s friends and relatives  and remind us heat of our own families, besides this we experienced kayaking, tennis, American bowling, Frisbee, bike ridings and first time in my life I went to Atlantic Ocean.

During the program we experienced real American-community life by being involved in Civic Engagement projects were we played with children’s, cleaned up the stream, sorted various products at Food bank, dug in Community Garden, have built real houses at Habitat for Humanity project.

Ben Franklin turned out to be not just an educational exchange, it’s turned out to be something more, a family of totally different characters and personage, a family that is not near you, but it all the time close to your heart and mind, BFTF is not a time framed program is BEST FRIENDS TOGETHER FOREVER.

BFTF changed me…

BFTF movie

Penguin Dance

Waka Waka Dance

Habitat for Humanity

Cleaning The Stream

FILM WORKSHOP

1. Road to visibility – authors: Karoline Kelder *(Estonia), Scout O’Beirne *(Alabama) and Daniel Voda *(Moldova)

2. What is Art – authors Marcia Purins (Latvia) and Heqiqet Babayeva (Azerbaijan)

3. Saving The River – authors: Mads Andreas Danielsen (Norway) and Efthymios Skoufas (Greece)

4. Grow it Yourself – authors: Olivier Danenberg (Belgium), Andreas Georgiades (Cyprus) and Amila Selimadzovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)