my experience with Tenerife Job Training and the island

Over the past few months, I had the privilege of joining the amazing team at Tenerife Job Training through the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) program. This EU-funded initiative fosters collaboration between aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs within their respective fields. I was fortunate to learn that Mariví, from Tenerife Job Training, offers her expertise through this program and it has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside this incredible superhouse of women!

Within the past months I could not only learn about the reality of being an entrepreneur but the stay also brought me closer to my own idea of founding a transnational educational association. Through conversations, collaborations, observation and practical learnings I got to delve into the key tasks, opportunities and challenges in providing educational courses and benefited a lot from Mariví and her colleagues’ grand knowledge in the field of educational tourism. Through this I could draw relations to my own idea, put it in perspective which fruitfully evolved the upbringing of concrete steps in setting up the association. Through the regular exchanges I could get a good overview and glimpse of an (entrepreneurial) mindset and showed me the creative way of guiding a company, the necessity of staying flexible while setting boundaries and being open to continuous learning within the company.After all it has been delightful and inspirational to discover running a successful company can align with alternative economic values that prioritize people and the planet, challenging conventional capitalist narratives.

Although staying abroad for this work-related reason, learning didn’t stop at the doorstep of the company. In fact, for various reasons it is quite the opposite with Tenerife Job Training, as they are promoting the immersion with local lifestyle on the island with every single one of their courses. Through accompanying the courses, I had the opportunity to myself visit fascinating places on the island where a highlight is shed on the local, often-overlooked places, traditions and nature that almost get invisible in a highly touristic area.  This made it an even more interesting time for me, as I could combine my stay with my with prior work experiences, my academic journey in adult education in highlighting informal places and value local engagement as well as alignments with my own values.

As in every of my journeys aborad, instead of following the paths to visit  typical places,  I sought to getting to know the local life with all of the  highlights and challenges the local society is facing, especially in controversial (geopolitical) places. While in the first sight this seemed to be little difficult landing in the south of Tenerife as a main tourist area, I look out to engage with authentical places and conversations with people. Learning from conversations, listening to their stories brings me a lot of possibilities for connection,  further understanding (each other) and contextualization  with my own lived experience, which eventually helps to work together transforming the world for good.  So I got to learn a lot BEYOND the actual learning experience for founding my own association as of the interrelations of (political) struggles and possibilities that comes from being a peripheral EU region.

Again I’d like to express my gratitude for this opportunity learning from such dedicated, energetic and fun women. I’m glad to say that it is only a “see you later” and I’m already looking forward to further collaborations! And in the meantime, I’ll continue practicing my Spanish language skills. ;)  ¡Muchas gracias por todo!

Diana