Spring Seminar: European Youth against Racism and Xenophobia
30 January – 6 February 2005
European Youth Centre Strasbourg, France



Why this Study Session?

As mentioned in the foreword Rural Youth Europe has worked in co-operation with the Council of Europe on similar issues before and aims at developing strategies of mainstreaming Human Rights and Intercultural Dialogue and fight against Racism and Xenophobia. Rural Youth Europe is committed to supporting the work of the Council of Europe, Directorate of Youth & Sports and in particular the Human Rights Education Programme. With this years’ study session we decided to focus especially on DISCRIMINATION, RACISM and XENOPHOBIA, as this was an expressed need by our members when discussing about the expansion of the European Union, migration and related effects in prior activities. 

Overall Aim of the Study Session

• To prepare young people from rural youth organisations to act against the growing Racism and Xenophobia within their local environment and the society in general, through strengthening their capacities to deal with these issues and to organise relevant activities within their organisations or/and Rural Youth Europe.

In pursuing this aim, we’ve made use of the special experiences of Council of Europe Youth Directorate Human Rights Education Programme, as well as previous and current experiences within activities of ‘Rural Youth Europe’.

Objectives of the Study Session

• To provide the participants with possibilities to get to know each other as well as their organisations and realities.
• To examine participants’ perceptions about Racism and Xenophobia.
• To analyse the challenges faced by the young people in rural areas in relation to the topic.
• To provide some theoretical and practical knowledge on the concepts and how to deal with these and related phenomenon, such as anti-Semitism, discrimination, social exclusion, etc.
• To raise their awareness on the importance of ICL as a tool to combat /fight against racial prejudices, intolerance, xenophobia, etc.
• To define relevant strategies and to prepare concrete projects related to the theme of the seminar, which can be implemented within the framework of their NGOs and Rural Youth Europe.
• To provide them with some relevant tools such as information (funding, relevant programmes of the CoE,..) and skills + training materials.
• To promote exchange of good NGO practices in dealing with the issues.
• To increase pax motivation to work against Racism and Xenophobia.
• To introduce Rural Youth Europe and the CoE.
• To strengthen networking between the NGOs and within Rural Youth Europe.

Learning Outcomes of Participants

The participants took to chance to deepen their knowledge on Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination as well as Human Rights and Human Rights Education in general; furthermore it was important for participants to analyze how this can be used in their future work with young people.
Intercultural learning was one of the central learning experiences for the participants and the organizers’ put a major effort on the various workshops and inputs in this field. Simply for the reason that only through a good intercultural knowledge und understanding barriers can be solved, as well as prejudice, discrimination, racism and xenophobia avoided. During the intercultural learning simulations, participants stepped into the shoes of a refugee, a homeless person, an unemployed person, a gay or a prostitute for example. Those simulations were followed up with fruitful discussions and participants learned in many ways that they can help friends/people from other ethnic groups/etc. It broadened their mind and made the participants aware of many different issues related to the topic. Moreover, it made them very much reflect upon their own values and life in their communities.

During the seminar participants gained a basic understanding of human rights education approaches and also got acquainted with the “Compass Manual”. They learned about many different ways to present / work with topics related to racism and xenophobia with young people in youth organizations and how to get these across without being boring.

Participants stated that they enjoyed very much getting an overview of discrimination, racism and xenophobia issues, because until now many of them haven't thought about it much and nevertheless, they are convinced that these issues should be covered more within rural youth work.
In addition, participants learned about funding projects and project development, when towards the end of the study session they also started to put their knowledge into practice by developing projects (many of them European cross-country group projects, but also national, regional, and local ones) which are to be realized within their youth organizations back home.

In working groups on ‘conclusions’, participants developed concrete answers and solutions on questions like: What are the major challenges, faced by young people in Europe in relation to the topic of the session? What are the main strategies that young people in rural areas have in order to address these? How can these strategies be implemented?

For many young people participating in the study session, it was also a completely new experience to communicate with people of different English ability (e.g. some native speakers having to speak slower) which was also part of the on-going Intercultural learning process. Moreover, the learning about other organizations, cultures and about European (rural) youth in general was a very intense and challenging experience for all participants.


Further outcomes

In achieving the aims and objectives of the study session, “RYEurope” targeted to strengthen and enlarge its existing European network and encourage new partnerships.

The organisation Rural Youth Europe managed to expand its networks in several directions:
First of all, with involving several organisations and individuals who are not members of Rural Youth Europe and are active in the field of HRE and/or working with minorities. Secondly, a new effort was put on mainstreaming human rights education in the activities of RYEurope. Thirdly, RYEurope continued to further develop the concept to network with countries where the movement doesn’t have any member organisations yet (e.g. Macedonia, Albania, Russia).

As a matter of fact, with organisations like ECRI (European Commission on Racism and Intolerance), NYC of Armenia, DROM Macedonia, Minorities of Europe and the European Roma organisation Rural Youth Europe co-operated for the first time during this activity and those will definitely also be an important link for the organisation in the future.

See photos here

Attachments:

Spring Seminar 2005 - report.pdf