Ivana Srećković: "Friends for life"

  

Every year, students and other young people from Montenegro are awarded a scholarship to attend the European Forum Alpbach. We are proud that in 2015 IGAP sent two scholarship holders to Alpbach, thanks to the support of our sponsors, UNIQA insurance and Hypo Alpe Adria Bank Podgorica.

 

Our scholarship holder, and now IGAP member Ivana Srećković, has decided to write a few words on her experience at the last year's Forum. We are publishing her writing in its entirety:

"For me, it was a great pleasure to be a part of the 70th European Forum Alpbach held in Austria after hearing about it during my attendance of the Alpbach Summer School of European Integration in Belgrade the year before. Big efforts of our initiative group in Podgorica and the sponsor of my scholarship - UNIQA (insurance company in Montenegro) provided me the chance to enjoy the whole Forum and to participate in both Seminar week and symposiums later on. 

The topic of this year’s Forum was “InEquality” and those interested in politics, science, culture, business, as well as many other fields, could listen to very useful lectures on the topics of their interest. For the Seminar week I chose two seminars: “Global Food Security and Nutrition” and “The United Nations Security Council” and I took part in all symposiums. Although these two topics do not seem to have a lot in common, both of them showed inequality in different countries, nations and cultures and I believe that they were among most visited seminars of the Forum.

Since they are leaving nothing to the case, social life of the participants was also arranged and we always had something to do and places to go to. This way, international participants were able to experience Tyrol and Austria thanks to the natives and Austrians had a great chance to host accomplished young people from all around the world and show why this Forum is worth being held for the 70th time. And they showed it, indeed!

As an international Forum, it connects many different profiles among both speakers and participants of the Forum, which leaves me with good friends and acquaintances for the whole life. Even though I travelled a lot in the past, Austria surprises me over and over again, especially with one of the most beautiful “flower villages” in the country. Alpbach is a small place but it should be part of everyone’s “must see map”. For all the above mentioned reasons, these two weeks were well spent for me and something I would never change even if I had a chance to."