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POP: Power Of Peace

2021-2-LV02-KA153-YOU-0000381712021Mobility of youth workersterminated
Countries: LV|PL|LT|CZ|EL|HU|RO|MK|IT|PT|TR · Grant: €41,662
Digital skills and competencesPreventing racism and discriminationQuality and innovation of youth work

Objectives

In a report published by the Council of Europe Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) calls on Latvia to encourage the reporting of racist and homo-/transphobic hate crimes, promote the integration of vulnerable groups in education, language training, employment and health, and to provide for the automatic recognition of Latvian citizenship for children born to the so-called group of “non-citizens”. the report makes 21 recommendations to the authorities. Within two years ECRI will evaluate progress made with regard to two of them that it considers to be priority recommendations: establish a unit within the State Police tasked with reaching out to vulnerable groups in order to increase trust in the police and address the problem of under-reporting of racist and homo-/transphobic hate crimes; provide for the automatic recognition of Latvian citizenship for children born to “non-citizens”. Also according to a 2019 Eurobarometer survey, 75 % of young people who follow or participate in online and offline debates had witnessed or experienced abuse, threat or hate speech. According to a 2018 Eurobarometer survey, “hate speech is the type of illegal content most mentioned by respondents in 10 countries (in particular Malta, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Poland). While Estonia, Italy and Lithuania are the only countries where fewer than one in five say to have come across hate speech online”. Eurostat, in the document “Being young in Europe today” shows concerns about the behaviours of children and young people. According to the report, they may be exposed to potentially harmful content, which may create dependency, anxiety or aggression”. We intend for this project to meet some of these needs by supporting youth workers to have concrete and adaptable tools to enable them to recognise, challenge and ultimately transform hate speech to antidiscrimination messages through social advertisements. On one level the challenge lies with youth workers identifying the most effective and constructive ways to intervene and respond when discrimination happens in the youth space. On another, the challenge centres on how best to support young people in understanding the impact that discrimination can have, to know where it comes from, and to learn and challenge the attitudes that lie behind it. Our project seeks to address these challenges in order to create safer and more inclusive youth environments. As youth workers, youth leaders we work directly with young people and of course, we cannot know all the details as family life, religion, cultural background, etc. of our target group. So, several times we don’t want and we can hurt. We can hurt with an innocent joke; we can discriminate with a look, a phrase, an unconscious behaviour. Nowadays, working with immigrants, Roma people, members of different ethnic groups, or only with a young person simple, we cannot know which issue can be really sensitive, as e.g. showing a funny short movie about religion or women can be really discriminative towards someone and we even don’t know about it. We don’t know that we discriminate. By our project initiated by BIID (LV), YouthClub (RO), YOPA (HU), SENATE (MK), Elios (IT), Pro A (PT), FOB (PL), ESKISEHIR (TY), IO (LT), FAR (CZ), HYP (GR)we aim to make people aware of their subculture, their behaviour towards differences, raise awareness on their stereotypes and prejudices and spotlight when they discriminate others even unconsciously. Foster understanding how media effect their perspectives towards each other, how a joke can be discriminative even without knowing it. Then as next step, turn it upside down, use media as tool against discrimination. Use the popular tools what young people like nowadays for the sake of anti discrimination and even invent projects and build partnership around the topic as antidiscrimination by the tool as media devices. The overall aim of the training is to train youth workers and youth leaders on using media (jokes, short movies and advertisements) as tools on antidiscrimination. To make them aware of their own cultural background, and how it influences them towards different cultures. To foster understanding the reasons behind their reaction, stereotypes and prejudices, and to recognize discriminations around and by them. To learn usage of new media technology on antidiscrimination with for and by young people they work with such as Roma, minorities and migrants’ backgrounds.

Project partners (11)