Objectives
The main aim of “STOP HATE” is to equip youth workers with the skills and knowledge necessary to develop practical tools and counter-arguments to online hate speech which they can use in work with young people. In this regard, the specific objectives of the project for youth workers are:
-To recognize what online hate speech is.
-To know the difference between freedom of speech and what is prohibited, such as illegal hate speech.
-To understand how social media is used to recruit followers to the hate speech narrative, especially the terroristic ones, and ideas and their influence on young people.
-To provide advice and information regarding the different institutions promoting the respect and the protection of human rights across Europe.
-To introduce youth workers the “Bookmarks” (revised version 2016). The manual for combating hate speech online through human rights education.
-To strengthen the role of youth organisations in identifying and speaking up against illegal online hate speech and those human rights violations affecting especially young people.
-To develop youth workers’ competencies in planning cross border and international campaign for countering online hate speech.
Activities
STOP HATE will see the realization of Youth workers’ mobility activity, a training course, that will take place in Torremolinos (Malaga metropolitan area) for a total period of 8 days (including travelling days). The project methodology will be based on non-formal education (NFE) methods, valorising the knowledge and experiences of the participants. Methods will include inputs, working groups, exercises, debriefing, workshops, reflection groups, role-play, communication campaign etc.
24 youth workers of partners organisations will participate in the training course and 19 of them will be with fewer opportunities. For the participants’ selection the following criteria will be taken into consideration:
-Mix of existing and experienced youth workers but also youth workers who are new or newish to human rights and online hate speech topics. This will allow a good dynamic in discussions and for learning to take place both ways. The more experienced youth workers will be able to share their experience with hate speech topic and at the same time will gain new ideas and approaches from those youth workers new to the topic.
-Demonstration of social sensibilities (socially active youth workers/volunteers with a role in local communities and interested in human rights projects, dealing with online and offline hate speech)
-Youth workers particularly active on the Internet and on social media.
-Youth leaders/workers who wish to build capacity and gain new skills with the aim to become more active in the life of their community, who want to become responsible for positive changes and be a part of the transformation, and who wish to develop international partnership with the other participants.
-Experienced or interested in working with Erasmus+ programme.
-Personal beliefs and attitudes
-Gender quota (50-50).
Impact
The project will have direct, positive effects on the different participants as they will acquire more specialized knowledge on human rights education and online hate speech for Erasmus+ and non-profits projects, transversal competences, perception of self-esteem and a positive sense of belonging to the wider community, and through the exchange of good practices for youth workers there will be concrete opportunities of intercultural contact as well as upskilling professional competences, adding comparative assessment and rating of the results, the perception of a professional growth and greater social recognition of the training and educational mission by stakeholders.
Target groups and other stakeholders include International bodies, youth centres, non-profit organization working with disadvantaged youth, willing to add non-formal activities to their formal curriculum; local and regional administrative bodies looking for more prepared and better skilled youth and social workers for running social projects in their community, and at large organizations interested in human rights defense, online hate speech and youth issues working with EU funds. These will benefit from the positive outcome achieved, in terms of their replicability and dissemination, improving their visibility and their impact within their own community.
The main objective of the project is to develop the participants’ professional skills in order to self-develop new competences, to tackle online illegal hate speech and the risks it poses to human rights and democratic societies.
Young people, will be the indirect beneficiaries of STOP HATE and they will take advantage of the future activities planned by the youth workers involved in this project: new online hate speech and human rights courses, workshops and projects focused the need to educate young people to use correctly social media and the web, posting messages of peace and love and avoiding any hate speech narratives. New trained youth workers will also teach young people on how to report hate speech online and how to counter hate speech. Moreover, local youth will be involved in follow-up of the project, this will become for them an additional opportunity to improve their skills.