At its meeting of 14th March the Rotary Club of Anstruther was delighted to welcome Maria Vint, who came to talk about her experiences as a ‘EuroScola’. Her talk was delivered with great confidence and supported by an extremely well put-together and colourful powerpoint presentation.

Maria, was sponsored by Anstruther club to visit Strasbourg as part of Rotary’s EuroScola programme. It included time at the European Parliament. The selection process is demanding and Maria was competing against final-year students from secondary schools across Scotland and with a final group being selected to join young people from across Europe’s member states.

Maria is studying Advanced Highers and has just secured a place at St Andrews University to study International Relations and Anthropology. She explained how valuable she found the EuroScola experience as all formal activities are in French – including presentations and questions in L’Hemicycle - complete with headphones, translators and a large audience. She was selected to present one of the questions, which we were able to see in a video clip.

We heard also of friendships made with other young people from across Europe and of the on-going friendships that developed as a group of strangers got to know one another and worked together.

It was intriguing to hear about the ‘Eurogame’ – a quiz of 15 questions, with each question in a different European language. There was also ‘Le Sondage’ which involves going out onto the streets of Strasbourg to interview passers-by about their understanding of Scotland. Maria noted some stereotypes including haggis!, but also a positive view of Scotland, especially its pursuit of green energy. There was also strong support for the UK to remain a part of Europe.

We heard too of sharing cultures; of music, of dining together – and even of an international Ceilidh.

Following questions a warm vote of thanks was proposed by William Duncan, who complimented Maria on her very accomplished and informative talk.