[info]The E-booklet of ‘Time to Make Love Speech’ may be found HERE. It focuses on the topics and initiatives of “Love Speech” and “No Hate Speech”. The contents are based on the activities of the training course and the ideas of its participants.[/info]
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It’s time to spread love internationally!
Erasmus+ Training Course “Time to Make Love Speech” (acronym TMLS) took place in Kaunas, Lithuania on September 4-10, 2017. Project’s mission was to raise social awareness of hate speech and show youth workers the means how they could tackle that through their organisations.
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Inspiration for the Project
People of different races, cultures, sexual orientations and religions are often enduring intolerance, verbal abuse & harassment, which results in decreasing their self-‐esteem & eventually their exclusion from the society (according to RED network). Even though the EU acts towards eliminating these wrongs, countries, such as Lithuania, Germany, Spain, UK, Turkey and Italy still face different forms of substantial hate speech. Where everything begins? With the hate speech. It is so common that people are used to it and they ignore offensive words. However, words can easily turn into something worse– aggression.
We believe that this problem could be best tackled by creating positive movement towards love speech. To facilitate the creation of such movement, project “Time to Make Love Speech” (acronym TMLS) was carried out in Kaunas, 2017.
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Objectives of the Project
Main objective of the project is to deminish hate speech and create an international movement “Love Speech” which aims to have a positive impact on communities. To achieve that, key aims were set: (1) to strengthen participants’ knowledge about hate speech, human rights education and legal tools; (2) to create new solutions for preventing hate speech through youth organisations; (3) to learn about “Love Speech” and how this movement could be implemented in practice; (4) to spread the idea to youth & the wider audience through youth organisations; (5) to show participants how they can effectively protect victim’s rights; (6) to increase the competences & facilitate mutual collaboration on the topic of participating organizations.
The project also aimed to help the participants grow professionally, keep them active, involve them in multi-cultural discussions, develop a number of skills and competences and create new partnerships across Europe.
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Project’s Participants
30 youth workers from Lithuania, Germany Spain, United Kingdom, Turkey and Italy gathered to disucss and search for solutions to prevent hate speech and how to reverse it into ‘love speech’. Since participants gathered for this project were youth workers, overall knowledge and experience in dealing with hate speech was extensive, which ensured fluent exchange of good practises of initiatives fighting agaisnt hate speech.
Their view on the project is best represented by one of theirs quote:
Kat, United Kingdom “Best project I have been on! The training was very productive and although it was intense learning, I feel it has been a great mix of practical activities with different people”
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Project’s Activities
To achieve objectives mentioned above, a range of NFE methods developed by all the partner organisations were employed. Main activities identified forms of hate speech we are faced on a daily basis. They also contributed to the creation of non-formal education methods to share the knowledge, and created the means of spreading information about the idea and movement of “Love Speech” to the public.
Involvement, creativity and initiative of all the participants was encouraged throughout the activities, which included: 1) interactive workshops on gender equality and gender identity, 2) meeting representatives of youth empowering movements, 3) creation of promotional videos; 4) country workshops on the project topic, and much more. Participants took part in creating 5) social actions promoting the importance of love and kindness towards others . Since the project goal was to reach the public and disseminate the results effectively: 6) project booklet was created. All of this ensured that the project would induce a positive effect on the participants, organisations and make an impact at the regional, national and international levels.
Some of the key activities’ descriptions may be found below.
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Free hugs initiative
“When was the last time you hugged a stranger?” – with a puzzled face participants wondered and we provided a simple anser – “Why not do it during the project?”. With brighter than sun smiles and colourful as rainbow ballons of all shapes and forms we went to the streets of Kaunas with a simple, yet amazing mission – hug Kaunas (or as many people as possible). Pictures can be seen below (More of the pictures can be seen in Facebook page of the movement!):
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Eye Contact initiative
Hyped after a successful mission we started thinking what else can we do to lessen the gap between people and help them become more empathic. After watching some motivational videos we came to the conclusion that the best way to bridge the gap between the strangers – eye contact.
After making some promotional posters we gathered in a town square, sat down on the grass and invited people to ecperience something unique. At first locals were puzzled by what they saw but this feeling was followed by curiosity which grew to great succes and interest of everyone around. You can see our greatest moments below (More of the pictures can be seen in Facebook page of the movement!):
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Love tunnel
“Love is in the air” is a famous quote followed by colourful spring bloom. We decided to apply this saying to the colourful autumn and introduce locals to the love tunnel. Blindfolded locals had to go in a straight line while feeling the warmth and touch of others. Thorugh this tunnel we wanted to show how people lost touch with one another and how easy we can regain it. Participants of the project and participants of the tunnel were really happy with the turnout and as one of them said: “I didn’t expect the touch of a stranger to be so comforting and warm”.
More of the pictures can be seen in Facebook page of the movement!
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Refugee sports day “Solidarity event”
Solidarity is one of the key aspects of Love Speech movement and we thought it would be amazing for all of us to participate in Lithuanian event “solidarity day” which was held in Jonava, neighbouring city of Kaunas. During the event we had an opportunity to get to know refugees currently living in Lithuania, closer, hear about their stories and what plans they have for the future. Rise to the skies gave big flowers, giraffes and small dogs made of colourful balloons. Some adults and kids had a lot of fun with trying to make their own pet out of balloon while others showed their artistic skills at painting “hands of solidarity”. It left a huge impression on both the participants of the project and event and happyness was spread across the hearts of both adults and kids.
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Other activities
The participants also had a chance to meet representatives of social actions in Lithuania tackling hate speech, gender stereotypes and other accute, hate speech related topics in Lithuania and Europe (No Hate Speech movement, Dress for Success). Furthermore, partipants took part in open discussions (“World Cafe” activity) and creative workshops on how various stereotypes could be negated and the history of their emergence. Each participant had an opportunity to present their volunteering experience and background in fighting hate speech, which was later discussed and applications were thought of for good practices to apply in home countries. Every evening participants had a chance to introduce their culture, history and traditional cuisine. They not only showed videos and photos, but also made dances, songs, games and quizzes to get every participant of the project involved.
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Video of the project
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Project’s Success
The organizers describe the project as a success in all senses. Both the informal learning proccess, as well as the sharing of participant experiences among each other worked really well. As the knowledge assessment of the participants showed – the project displayed over 50% growth of knowledge of no hate speech and social actions towards fighting it
The participants of the project were also amazed by Lithuania. The city culture left a lasting impression on them. Interactions they had with the Lithuanian participants and locals showed how different and truly amazing people are. In their own words “Even though the weather is not so great sometimes, people here in Kaunas “.
All in all, the project left a positive effect on the participants, organisations and made an impact at the regional, national and international levels. Social actions, youth informing and many other activities, done during the project are sure to spread to partner countries, further increasing the impact of “Make Love Speech” movement as a whole. With the groth of the movement and similar initiatives social problems will be diminished to a certain extent. We believe that the initiatives our participants took part in will inspire local and international youth to join “Make Love Speech” and / or others social initiatives and similar projects in all of the European Union to promote fight against hate speech.
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[one_third_last]Poster of the project:
[image icon=”zoom” lightbox=”true”]https://refugees.lt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TMLS-poster.png[/image]
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Project’s schedule, activities & material:
- Schedule of the Training Course;
- Info pack of the Training Course with all the information for project participants;
- Current knowledge assessment, which was done in the beginning of the project;
- Results of the current knowledge assessment;
- Tools to teach what dangers can lack of media literacy bring and how it is used to spread hate speech:
Ability to spy private facebook accounts;
Ability to track peoples locations and travels without their knowledge; - 3D VR films about refugees, shared by the participants:
Video nr. 1
Video nr. 2 - Basic video making rules presented during the project and the examples shown;
- Interactive presentation on hate crimes in Lithuania;
- Videos related to the topic that were shown in a non-formal video afternoon for the participants:
Video #1
Video #2
Video #3
Video #4 - Make Love Speech in Lithuania Vision;
- Make Love Speech in Lithuania Mission;
- Project evaluation form;
- Participants nomination form;
- Free Hugs“ initiative;
- „Eye Contact“ initiative;
- „Love Tunnel“ initiative;
- Youthpass example;
- Kaunas City Challenge;
- Videos, shared by the participants on the topics of hate speech;
- Practice Guidelines for LGBT Clients;
- Presented Lithuanian initiative on fighting hate crime;
- Project’s e-booklet.
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Information About the Project on the Web / Media:
- Nomination in yearly Kaunas Initiatives;
- About our initiatives speaks national media;
- Facebook page of Make Love Speech Initiative;
- About the training speaks our Lithuanian ambassadors;
- Our participants share their experience online;
- Video of the project our Lithuanian friends made;
- Our spanish partners about the project;
- Our Turkish partners about the project;
- UK local youth radio discusses our project;
- Participants taking part in “Solidarity Event”;
- TMLS project on international media.
The list is constantly being updated.
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