Two charming trainings took place in the Civil College in Hungary at the end of September and beginning of October 2010. The training gathered an overall of 24 participants, representing 15 youth civic organizations. It was held within the Youth against Racism project (YAR), but also as a logical closing of the Citizen Participation Week – European imitative with a great success in Hungary for the last few years.
Since the main goal of the YAR project is to provide an anti-discrimination policy at the strategy level, the Hungarian Association for Community Development (the YAR project partner in Hungary) decided to target the leaders of organizations. The syllabus of ‘Youth leader training’ contained some leader self-knowledge, basic issues of group-dynamics, practical and theoretical learning on cooperation, competition and conflict management among groups and individuals, socio-psychology of minorities and discrimination and overview of leader-styles.
The backbone of the training was a group of well-known practices used in anti-discrimination education/training and sensitizing such as ice-breakers, empathy practices, film-analysis, etc. And the charming education methods seemed to work.
“The trainings seemed to be a very effective and deep way to make changes in the youngsters thinking according to the project’s message”, HACD team members say. “This year we implemented some other large-scale programs connected with similar topics (Nation-wide summer university about tolerance and solidarity, Citizens Participation Week linked with anti-discrimination themes), and these programs were very successful, but the trainings were much more powerful in making positive and overall changes in the target group’s thinking.”
HACD is currently working with the trainees and other youth organization in Hungary on a draft declaration against racism and exclusion in youth work. Every organisation which identifies itself as an open and tolerant team with anti-rassist principles is welcome to join the process. Check it out here.
