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Youth Workers Combating Hate Speech Online & Offline

2022-3-NL02-KA153-YOU-0001026652022Mobility of youth workersfinalized
Countries: NL|EL|CY|GE|MD|UA|CZ|SK|BA|EE|FR|AM · Grant: €32,594
Democracy and inclusive democratic participationEuropean identity, citizenship and valuesInclusion of marginalised young people

Objectives

Every day, many young people in Europe come across hate speech. Social network proliferation increases the number of occurrences of cyberbullying and cyber-harassment, which in turn increases the dangers to democratic order and creates fear among youth and youth organizations. Despite the fact that governments all over the world are putting laws and regulations in place to protect the internet, there is still a lack of resources available to teach internet literacy and online skills to youth workers and young people themselves. Even with the abundance of educational activities aimed at preventing radicalization, there is a dearth of programs that cultivate youths' online communication skills, help them avoid dangerous and illegal content, and help them combat extremist propaganda and hate speech. Young individuals are traumatized by hate speech on the internet, which leads to low self-esteem, anxiety, sleep disturbances, feelings of fear and loneliness, and in extreme situations, suicide. Generally speaking, hate speech frequently plays a role in normalizing discriminatory and intolerable behaviors. Examples include dismissing offensive remarks as jokes, turning a blind eye to violent threats, disguising offensive material as "freedom of speech," and even accepting hate speech as the norm because it is so persistent and uncensored. In many countries, hate speech that is sponsored contributes to a wider climate of division and intra-societal strife. As youth organizations active in fostering digital engagement and engaging with youth at the local, national, and European levels, we designed the "Youth Workers Combating Hate Speech Online & Offline" Training Course. The goal of this course was to address and transform hate speech found online in a way that is both safe and effective. The objective of the project was to provide 34 youth workers and educators from the EU (The Netherlands, Cyprus, Greece, France, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Estonia) and neighboring partner countries (Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) with the skills, knowledge, and resources they needed to support young people in their fight against online oppressive narratives, propaganda, and hate speech. This was accomplished through the collaborative efforts of the 12 organizations involved. The Training Course pursued the following main objectives: A. Increasing the competencies of youth leaders, youth workers and educators in the field of anti-hate speech activism and Human Rights Education; B. Mainstreaming anti-hate speech and HRE methods in youth work and developing future HRE-related projects in partner countries; C: Developing effective strategies to combat hate speech and cyberbullying; D. Increasing the international dimension of youth work, notably with reference to human rights education and youth participation; E. Assuring a long term, sustainable increase in quality of partner organizations' work with combating hate speech, cyberbullying, and other human rights issues; F. Building a community of European youth workers able to develop local activities on Human Rights. Along with helping participants develop new competencies (knowledge, abilities, and attitudes), our project aimed to help them to improve their critical and creative thinking in order to combat hate speech online.

Project partners (12)