By implementing this project, we wanted to awaken and empower the sense of acceptance, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, and solidarity in young people towards different nationalities, religions, and socio-economic groups. Driven by the difficulty of modern societies to accept diversity (in all its forms), even though they consist of people from different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds our wish was to equip and empower youngsters with the necessary skills and competences and engage and motivate them for supporting and standing up for all those “minority” groups who have no voice, are marginalized, and excluded from society and its processes and become social-changers.
Through raising awareness about this issue not only we made young people empathetic enough to be actively involved in their local communities, make a change and have an impact, raise their voices when it comes to their rights, and support and stand up for others when they see injustice or violation of human rights, but we also contributed to the encouragement of society (and its citizens) to improve its role in helping people to feel a sense of belonging and identity when settling into a new place and community.
Our goal was through this project and its activity to contribute and corresponded to one of the set priorities of Erasmus+ Programme and European Commission for young people, which is “Inclusion and Diversity” and the provision of equal opportunities for the educational, professional, and personal development of youth through non-formal and informal education. This was achieved by 1) including young people primarily from ethnic minorities, descendants of immigrants, and youngsters with social/ educational/ economic, and geographical obstacles, 2) promoting the learning mobility of individuals and groups, as well as cooperation, quality, inclusion and equality, excellence, creativity and innovation at the level of organizations and policies in the field of education and training, 3) promoting non-formal and informal learning mobility and the active participation of youth, as well as cooperation, quality, inclusion, creativity, and innovation.
We created a safe learning environment for the participants, where they could express themselves without fear, share ideas and points of view, learn from each other, and all together discover the best ways to combat exclusion. To achieve all the above, we used interactive methods and approaches, based on non-formal education tools such as teamwork, brainstorming, role plays, debates, simulations, and of course reflection and evaluation. In this way, participants learnt to respect cultural diversity and foster mutual understanding between people from different countries driving European Integration, be open-minded, be tolerant and accept diversity, behave in conflict situations, and especially in multi-ethnic/ multicultural communities. They became more resilient to life’
Implementation
The training course involved 36 participants from 12 different countries, young people, youth workers, and people interested in tackling hate speech and developing practical skills in the human rights field.
The activities implemented were, in the beginning, energizers to build the group dynamics, get-to-know games, and a short introduction of the project’s objectives as well as expectations, fears, and contributions. Following this, we tackled the main concepts of the training course by redefining or refreshing them such as hate speech, narratives, discrimination, cyberbullying, radicalization, etc. Mapping human rights education stakeholders and creating infographics about national realities sessions were the highlights of the second day. We also had debates on inhuman rights education, a round of TedTalksto share relevant experiences and inspire others, a case study in the Utoya massacre, and created several disruptive online campaigns against extremist and hate narratives through the GAMMA+ Model. The training concluded with preapring a Beyond Hate guideline for stakeholders.
Results
The results of the project were:
- Empоwering 3 6yоuth wоrkers with digital skills within human rights educatiоn and preventiоn оf hate speech;
- Creating guidelines fоr yоuth wоrk and hate speech stakehоlders tо step