фестиваль "Join, discover and act"

Описание

from ytnf.org Discovered, joined and acted! International seminar-festival brought together 35 participants from Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Moldova, Switzerland, Great Britain, Russian Federation, Georgia, Belarus, Italy, Poland, the USA and Turkey to spend together one week of intensive learning, discussions and exercises, under the motto “Discover, join and act!”. The topics of the seminar were fight against racism and xenophobia, education on human rights, social inclusion and active role of volunteers in their communities. The seminar took place not far from the town of Liptsy, Kharkiv region, December 2-9, 2007. The program of the event was built on 3 types of workshops: sessions with training elements, workshops prepared by the prep-team and spontaneous workshops proposed by the participants. Joint efforts of everyone created friendly and safe atmosphere, open for learning, discussion and exchange of ideas. We discovered: - How to create a new world and decide upon what rights we need in it, tried to rank children’s rights, - Figured out why racism is attractive and ‘sexy’, and that there is a little bit of racism in all of us, it just matters how we deal with it. - What does it mean and how it feels, being excluded from game, from group, from community - Different types of volunteer project, do’s and don’ts for successful volunteer activities - Differences between patriotism and nationalism - Discrimination and its roots, how to avoid it - Issues with immigrants and refugees (inclusion and integration, human rights and social problems, regional and country differences) - How to teach about human rights, possible methods and approaches - What is nation and what is ethnicity, roots of ethnic conflicts - Neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine and other countries, symbols, structures and identification, why is this movement attractive, especially for young people - Buddhist principles and values in volunteering We acted: - not only during practical activities and exercises during workshops - not only during cultural evenings, presenting countries and cultures of participants - but also on stage, making a short movie on exclusion, human rights, international volunteer project, adventures and of course love! - learnt some Rumansch during yodeling workshop, which turned out to be a good thing not only or traditional kitchen singing, but maybe for modern shower as well - found out what does it mean to be a team and what it takes to built one And we managed to build this team and live as one team during the seminar. The seminar provided space to evaluate cooperation and communication among organizations, projects organized in each country, successful sides and needs for improvement; discuss needs and challenges of cooperation at local and international level. Working on same topics in different countries, participants could not only learn about each other’s experiences, but also make plans for international networking and developing joint ideas: street theater, summer school on human rights, gender workshops, seminar on self-organization of groups as a model for functioning civil society, anti-racism quest, human rights on horses and many more. Except for DVD with photos, materials of All different-all equal campaign, Compass and some other recourses, new friends and contacts, the seminar gave to the participants knowledge, ideas and inspiration not only to change something in personal behavior (be it a small thing like not afraid to speak for public, or not being silent when you see someone discriminated), but also plans to use experience gained for local seminars and activities, to use experiences of other organizations and activists, promote volunteering, look for new partners locally and internationally. The seminar was organized with financial support of European Youth Foundation, in the framework of campaign "All different - all equal".