Youth organisations and leaders against Antigypsyism

Stakeholders in youth sector, especially youth organisations and youth workers have the potential to address the issue first-hand. Youth organisations should be accessible to all youth, regardless the cultural, economic or societal background of the youth within the local environment. Youth workers must have the skills to work with youngsters with fewer opportunities, however, the training is desired in order to prevent the possible conflicts and ensure maximized inclusion of youth within the actions of youth policies.

The main idea is to provide youth organisations and youth workers with the framework and tools to include youth with diverse backgrounds and maximize the learning experience for all involved in activities. Moreover, the youth workers and participants will be able to recognize the potentially conflict situations and apply suitable interventions to it.

 

THEME:

Diversity, Human Rights, Conflict Resolution, Roma youth

 

GROUP SIZE:

9 – 40 participants

 

TIME:

90 minutes

 

OVERVIEW:

The participants will be able to recognize potential conflict situations and be able to choose the most suitable intervention to prevent the conflict and build the group cohesion.

 

RELATED RIGHTS:
  • Freedom of expression
  • Right to equality
  • Right to freedom from discrimination

 

OBJECTIVES:
  • To encourage youth organisations and workers to include youth with fewer opportunities, including Roma youth
  • To provide organisations with insights on managing diversity
  • To educate youth workers on suitable interventions to tackle discrimination

 

MATERIALS
  • Markers
  • Posters
  • Flipchart

 

PREPARATION
  • Prepare the cases of discriminatory actions applicable to the environment of the workshop
  • Create the evaluation questionnaire

 

INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Elaborate on the key concepts of diversity, such as stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination. Discuss the everyday procedures within the organisations and overview the current practices on dealing with diversity.
  2. Divide the participants to groups of 3 – 5 people per group. Provide them with print-outs with imaginary scenarios of potential conflicting situations within their work environment. Ask them to reflect on the situation through the given questions for debriefing – this activity should take at least 10 minutes.
  3. During the groupwork, reflect on the gathered information from point 1 and prepare a list of possible interventions and new practices that could be implemented within their work and organisation. You will use this during debriefing. Be available for the group to provide additional clarifications during their activity.
  4. Ask the groups to present their findings within 3 minutes each. After each presentation, give space for 1-3 questions, then summarize and express potential questions. Leave potential answers for the next step – group discussion.
  5. Facilitate 20 minutes of group discussion on the potential solutions that youth workers would apply within the organisational contexts. Make sure to get insights from participants with different profiles.
  6. Provide the theoretical insights and present the main interventions and principles, such as recognition, belonging, identity, multiculturalism and colour-blindness.
  7. Discuss with participants, how these principles could be applied on the scenarios during the group work. Seek new ideas to improve their work and organisational culture.
  8. Discuss how they could prevent discrimination in various contexts? What can they do as individuals and as an organisation? The chosen new ideas and applied practices will be archived as a poster, which should be done by one of the participants.
  9. Conclude the workshop with suggestions on the practices that organisation should have to minimalize discrimination in the workplace and their users.

 

DEBRIEFING AND EVALUATION
  • How you think the discriminated person in scenario felt?
  • What do you think the person causing discrimination was trying to achieve?
  • How would you intervene to deescalate situation?
  • What would be the consequences without your intervention and what would be the final outcome?
  • How would you prevent such situation in the future?

 

TIPS FOR FACILITATORS

As the workshop addresses youth workers and organisations, the focus should be to minimize the effects of nationality and culture on the identity of an individual within the settings. Your aim is to crate space for diversity.

Remember:
Stereotypes are the universal brain’s mechanism to organize information. While prejudices are emotionally charged stereotypes, discrimination is a negative act.

Each individual must first belong to the group, then he should be recognized as individual. Encourage team-building activities, call participants by their names and make sure their ascribed identity is only a part of their personal identity which group should recognize.
The scenarios which you are preparing should be related to actual work settings, for example at recruitment processes, performance evaluations, participation within the group activities, …

The interventions should follow the principles of colour-blindness, where you do not encourage ingroup-outgroup formation based on cultural characteristics. Moreover, organisational practices must be focused on result, based on clear communication. Individual cultural traits could be used as an advantage.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR FOLLOW-UP:

Ask them to maintain the awareness of own ingroup-outgroup thinking during their everyday work and suggest them to avoid any language that would further divide the co-workers or customers.

Provide them with basic readings and your contact for possible further clarifications or collaborations.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Schaafsma, J. (2006). Ethnic Diversity at Work. Diversity attitudes and experiences in Dutch organisations. Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers.
Super-diversity in societies explained by Steven Vertovec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-AHVnHxT38