Three participants from Croatia participated in the Erasmus+ training course named “Youth Work With Antibias Approach” from 2nd to 8th July 2018. in Diemeringen, France. The project involved partners from France,Turkey, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Netherland, Croatia and Portugal together with 3 trainers and 28 youth workers.
Throughout the project youth participants from various NGO’s worked together in teams on finding solutions concerning discrimination. Within the project participants have also gained valuable knowledge as being put into teams and developing their own workshops on the spot with assistance of the trainers know-how and by the use of real-life examples.
Although types of discriminations are different for all countries, the factors which cause all forms of discrimination arise from the same sources: the combination of prejudices and social power. One of the most effective methods to fight against discrimination in accordance with the Anti-Bias approach is to be aware of one’s own social power and power relations in the society beside the effort to get rid of prejudices. The main aim of this project was to focus on the awareness of these fundamental principles.
My biggest personal development was regarding leading workshops. It was a great way for me to have a confidence boost, something that I think is very important in every business today. This way, I was involved in international group and together we managed to develop and implement a workshop that was total success in the end, for which we were all very proud.
The most important thing I learned was listening to various discrimination stories. All of us come from different backgrounds, and this means that you have many different approaches to the same topic, which is great for widening your horizons and becoming even more open minded.
While participating in the project, I learned that I always have to be and stay open minded. There are so many wonerfulland talented people in this world, that are being discriminated because of their social power, physical disability or their origin.
My message to future participants is to participate in Erasmus+ projects as much as they can. They are a great opportunity to learn something new about certain topic that will most definitely be useful in their life. Also, meeting new people and traveling is great for practicing your foreign language skills.