Anti Bias and Intercultural Learning in Context of Youth Work and Informal Education
The 5-day-final event of the project consisted of two parts. The active participants of the project, who came from organisations in four countries, held meetings from October 5 to 7, 2009. They represented the organisations VIMIO (Vukovar, Croatia), ODN/Civilitas (Zielona Góra, Poland), bbjshare.it (Spoleto/Palermo, Italy) and RAA Brandenburg (Germany). The hosting funtion was realized by RAA Brandenburg, which prepared and managed the whole final event in cooperation with cooperating organisations from Brandenburg.
In the second part of the final event, the professional conference „Recognition and equality – Intercultural Learning in the Work with Youth and in Education“, held on 8th and 9th October 2009, was joined also by multipliers from educational organisations for adults and youth from Berlin, Brandenburg and Poland (see also point 2 of this report).
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Internal Final Event from October 5 to October 7, 2009 in Potsdam, Brandenburg
The main items in this event were a one-day final workshop on 6 October 2009 and an excursion to Mikado e.V. in auen on 7 October 2009.
In the final workshop the participants discussed the experience they made in the project and drew conclusions in a methodically complex setting. Every participant had the opportunity to voice his/her individual views on the project as a whole and on the objectives this project reached. Everybody also discribed the short and long term effects on their work with the target groups. Dr. Karsten Waniorek, who evaluates the whole project attended the workshop. This gave him the opportunity to get a direct feedback from the project participants, which constituted for him valuable information for the final evaluation. All those present in the workshop evaluated the joint work done as useful and successful. This judgement was made in consideration of the overcoming of various difficulties, which are inherent to a project of many years.
During the excursion to Mikado e.V., which is a cooperating youth work partner in this project, a professional discussion about children’s rights was held with director of German Leago for the Child, who is also the elected speaker of the National Coalition for the Realization of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Especially the Polish colleagues presened many experiences from their work in this area. Children’s rights have represented an important topic of the work of Civitas for many years. The discussion then was focussed on the contextual bridging between the pedagogical concept of Antibias and the spreading and realization of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in specific national contexts. An international professional conference is planned for the first half of 2010, which will continue the discussion from this point.
2. Professional conference „Recognition and equality – Intercultural Learning in the Work with Youth and in Education“, 8th and 9th October 2009 in Potsdam, Brandenburg
The professional conference presented the results of the three years of the EU project „Anti Bias and Intercultural Learning“ to multipliers from Brandenburg. It demonstrated the results in the context of work with the Antibias approach in the field of youth and adult education. The conference reached all of its objectives, which where
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Professional exchange
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Examining the possibilities of the approach in rural and small town shaped regiones
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International exchange of experiences and studying good practice.
Most successful was the conference topic on how work with the Antibias and other innovative approaches can prove to be used in regions of Brandenburg, where young people must learn living in diversity in another way then elsewhere, because they have no experience with great numbers of migrants in their everyday life. The conference presented a wide spectre of thematic lectures and workshops, on themes like equal opportunities/tolerance/recognition and non-discrimination, experience from work with various target groups in professional education, including educators; youth work and social work. Thus, it gave important impetus for a further inter-cultural opening of society.
The professional discussion was supported by contributions from Polish, Italian and Croatian lecturers, who explained their work with Antibias in their nationally specific settings.
The second day of the conference focussed on „Anti-Bias in a German-Polish Dialogue“. The cross-boarder cooperation between RAA Brandenburg and Civilitas/ODN from Zielona Góra demonstrated much common ground in the work with the Antibias approach in rural and small town dominated areas. They gave each other valuable impetus, which participants from Germany and Poland used in the conference constructively and extended them to new fields.
The working methods of the conference were those, described in the project application: exchange and multiplication of experience and results of the Antibias approach on the 1st day of the conference (8. October 2009) and more detailed work in the workshops
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Antibias in international youth work (lead by Anne-Sophie Winkelmann of Anti-Bias-Werkstatt Berlin)
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Antibias in schools (lead by Jetti Hahn von FiPP e.V.)
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Antibias wi the work with adults from the ZWST project „Changingperspectives“
on the 2nd day of the conference (9 October 2009).
The working results of the workshops were presented to the plenary session. In the discussion, which followed, participants were able to gain recommendations for their future endeavours, which serve the strengthening of competencies of children, adolescents and adults in Brandenburg. The method for this step in conference work was the “world cafè”, which at the same time gave feedback of the participants on the conference themes, its organisation and process. All participants gave a positive judgement.
During the conference lectures were held in German, Polish and English, and they were interpreted simultaneously.