Marta Sousa Coutinho

Marta Sousa Coutinho

Portugal

Even before starting my degree, I did international volunteering in São Tomé and Príncipe where I set up summer camps, youth groups for sustainable development and gave training in Family Planning.
Throughout my degree, I approached culture from the classical to the contemporary era, making me value each human being in its historical epoch, opening a theoretical door for the awareness of society and civilization development.
Through academic exchange opportunities, I did Erasmus in Osijek, Croatia. In this experience, I met a different culture, still living the post-war period. Travelled through all the countries of the former Yugoslavia and always tried to find how the hostilities had been resolved and what it was like to live in this time where you still feel tension and the policies used to get through the obstacles.
Through the NGO Just a Change, in the summer of 2017, I rebuilt, with several colleagues houses destroyed by the terrible fires that our country suffered in 2016.
I went to the south of Portugal, with colleagues from the faculty, to live and experience the community, responding to their needs.
All this being very practical, I looked for, through the Erasmus+ projects, training that could give me skills to better fulfil my knowledge. In these projects it is possible to live together and exchange cultures, knowledge and values and seek solutions to the problems that could be solved with good international relations, meeting people from several parts of Europe.
The first project was in Trakai, Lithuania, where people from Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Portugal participated. In this project, “Real Life Monopoly” I learned the view of the economy of both these countries and of Europe in general. Having enjoyed this international experience so much, I did another project in Spain. “The God’s Word” had participants from Spain, Turkey, Italy, Serbia and Portugal and discussed religion and its inclusion through time and nowadays in the world. As the last project so far, I went to Armenia together with native participants from Georgia, Italy, Cyprus and Ukraine. Named “Young People against Radicalization and Violent Extremism in Europe”, they discussed ways to overcome radicalism and violence in Europe. In this project we went to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Armenia, where we met several refugees who told us their stories, and we had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Anahit Hayrapetyan.
Still during my degree, I did a Postgraduate Diploma in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in conflict situations, at the National Defence Institute. The various modules of the course cover the classic elements relating to the UN Charter system regarding the use of force; the Geneva Conventions regime; international conflicts Geneva Conventions: international conflicts, protected persons and goods, regular and irregular combatants; the mechanisms for the application of disciplinary and criminal sanctions for the violation of humanitarian law; the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights relating to armed conflict.
I am currently taking my Masters in International Development and Public Policy for believing this is the key to a more sustainable and just world.