The second year RCN graduates left the College on Saturday 24th May, and early the following morning ten students and two teachers from the Laski Institute (Association for Care of the Blind) in Poland arrived for a ten-day visit as part of the EU-sponsored Comenius Bilateral School Partnership programme. For several years the College has participated in exchange visits between our two institutions: UWC Red Cross Nordic traveling to Poland to attend classes and take part in activities with our hosts at Laski; the Laski students then making reciprocal visits to the College.

Our Laski friends were hosted in the student village by the first years and took apart in a wide range of activities – attending classes, doing yoga, hiking, bicycle dressage, visiting a museum in Naustdal and more. The Laski students attended a Norwegian Course – looking at both language and culture – offered by RCN and members of the local Flekke community over several days, and also offered Polish classes for interested RCN students.

One of the goals of the programme is to develop an  integration-game for sighted and non-sighted participants to play together. We had already tested existing games like goalball and table tennis for the blind and are excited to have made good progress developing a version of land hockey; we are now at the stage of drawing up the rules of the game – and it’s going to be fun! The two groups will also be testing an integrated version of basketball when visiting Laski in October.

All in all, a very successful visit and our thanks go to all involved – especially to our very own Paulina Szymczak, for all her hard work and organisational skills.

Here is an album of photographs from an Activity Day that RCN and Laski students spent with asylum seekers from Bergum Mottak.