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#followme - Youth Movement for Social Change

2020-3-PL01-KA105-0950992020Youth mobilityfinalizedGood practice
Countries: PL|IT|FR|DE · Grant: €29,715
Creativity and cultureInclusion - equityCivic engagement / responsible citizenship

Objectives

The choice of the topic and place of the project was inspired by cyclical activities combining social prevention with cultural education, undertaken for over a dozen years by the FILMFORUM Association in Radom. Radom is a city of many social problems, where such phenomena as exclusion, poverty and unemployment are felt particularly acutely. During meetings with the leaders of communities dealing with social inclusion and broadly understood prevention, young people had the opportunity to learn about the problems that modern "street educators" face on a daily basis. They were surprised to find that work for people at risk of social exclusion has significantly changed its character in recent years, especially in the context of problems affecting young people. "Digital natives" - this term best describes the nature of the bond that connects young people today and the global network. For those who were born after 1995, a smartphone, messenger and social-media are the most natural ways of communicating with each other. Unfortunately, while the Internet carries a huge load of important and valuable information, it also has a second, dark face. The web has also become a field for uncontrolled aggression. YouTube, Instagram and Tik Toku are full of pathostreamers and pathoinfluencers. In closed Facebook groups, bullying occurs on colleagues you don't like. In this way, the problem of intolerance and exclusion of individual social groups - due to ethnic origin, low material status or political views - is transferred to the virtual world. The young people who came up with the project concept considered this problem to be important and requiring continuous activities aimed at making the society aware of the values ​​resulting from diversity and universal values ​​that unite all the inhabitants of Europe. As part of the project, young people intend to carry out a series of activities that use the popularity and eloquence of visual arts in order to initiate positive social changes, increase the level of tolerance and respect for mutual differences, and sensitize peers to harm caused by acts of violence, hatred and aggression on the Internet. The name of the project: "#followme" refers to one of the most popular hashtags in social media, which is also a symbol of a very current social problem - striving to gain attention and acceptance in the virtual world, unfortunately not always in a positive way. Youth Movement for Social Change is a grassroots voice of youth, opposition to the spread of hate, hate speech and stigmatization of people of different views or origins. The international youth exchange planned in the project will be devoted to examining the impact that the broadly understood film art can have (from feature films, through social campaigns, to short video forms used in social media). The main topic that young people saw as uniting all countries is the problem of non-reflection and exclusion of individual social groups - due to ethnic origin, low material status or political views. The problem of integrating people from marginalized communities was considered important by young people and required constant actions aimed at making the society aware of the values ​​resulting from diversity and universal values ​​that bind all the inhabitants of Europe. As part of the project, young people intend to carry out a series of activities that use the popularity and eloquence of visual arts in order to initiate positive social changes, increase the level of tolerance and respect mutual differences. During the project, young people will conduct research on valuable audiovisual content on the problem of intolerance, develop their own proprietary social campaigns to counteract negative phenomena, make their own social advertisements and deal with their implementation and dissemination.

Project partners (4)