Alejandro and Javier are sharing with us their experience from the project “Stop Hate”, recently hosted by EuropeYou, in Torremolinos, Spain.
Last month, we had an opportunity to take part in the training course “Stop Hate”, having the pleasure to present our country and learn from young people coming from different European countries such as Belgium, Romania, Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Spain. The project aimed to equip youth workers with the skills and knowledge necessary to develop practical tools and counter-arguments to online hate speech which they can use in work with young people.
It was a great chance for us to express our opinions on the topic of online hate speech as well as learn from professionals about all the threats that the Internet environment possess. Through different group tasks we discovered the rise of hate speech in Europe today, what is cyber hate and how we, the young people, can contribute to the reduce of hate speech. We learnt how to create a counter hate speech narratives and also we played some interesting role play games where while playing, we discovered how to tackle all this current issues.
One of the things, we liked the most was the preparation for our outdoor activity where we could meet local people and share with them about the project we are taking part. In groups, we went around the city and met a lot of people that were very excited to learn about what we were doing. We received a lot of nice feedback and many compliments. We also had some funny games on the beach that helped us to get to know each other bettter and contributed to the group environment, so later we felt more comfortable while talking for more important staff.
Being part of this project, helped us a lot to understand the importance of being active and contribute to the current problems. Internet brings us a lot of new and innovative things, but in the same time we youth, have to develop our critical thinking and evaluate when something is wrong. We are very grateful to EuropeYou for giving us the opportunity to spend a wonderful week with all these young and motivate people.
