Erasmus+ Strategic partnership

Project duration: 01.12.2016 – 30.11.2017

Racism and discrimination are not new phenomena and although publicly condemned, are often privately tolerated in online contexts. They have undergone a transformation from visible to more latent forms and are manifested in popular social networking sites (hereafter SNS). Youth, the main users of these sites, are particularly affected by and exposed to racist and discriminatory messages, that in forms of images, videos, comments, are circulated in SNS. Users can be easily mislead, since “cloaked” (disguised) forms of discrimination are hidden in false, “politically correct discourses”, like “I am not a racist, but… “. While taking into consideration how these sites constitute a powerful form of non-formal learning, recognizing how youth in particular are challenged by online racist contents, this project is directed towards providing guidance for vulnerable community members who are more likely to face discrimination (i.e. migrants, certain ethnic and cultural groups, young people at risk of social exclusion, their parents and educators) and for everyone willing to act against these conducts, such as NGOs, media content providers, community managers, local and national authorities. The previous ICUD project turned out to be a significant success and made good social impact . Its evaluation is published here “Internet: Creatively Unveiling Discrimination” http://www.collage-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Quarter3.pdf). This project will consist of similar stages as the original one although consist of different partner countries and take shorter period of time (12 instead of 24 months). The project will use the methodology of the original ICUD to prepare the participating youth workers to learn and use and share the antidiscrimination pack.

The project is aimed:

-to share methodology worked out during the project INTERNET: CREATIVELY UNVEILING DISCRIMINATION (I:CUD) called ‘antidiscrimination pack’ which has been done by CEPS SOCIALS PROJECTS (http://digitaldiscrimination.eu/);

-to enable and support young people to become active and responsible digital users;

-to assess and reflect on their own use of technology, make changes, challenge and combat digital discrimination.

The project provides a practical guide on how to unveil masked discriminatory practices: to show a way of becoming creative “prosumers”, who do not just passively “consume discriminatory contents” but actively produce material counteracting such conducts. There are 3 accumulative phases of the project, the framing research process (1), the action pilot process (2) and the communication and dissemination process (3) can be understood as logical steps in order to prepare our youth workers to learn, test
the antidiscrimination pack and later share it, an integrated and interactive tool that includes reflections of people working with youth and young people themselves.

Phase 1- based on the rules set by the original project the partner organizations collect theoretical frame and case studies within their interdisciplinary groups (teachers, social workers, youth trainers, community managers) to discuss and work out possible ways of acting against and combating discriminatory material in SNS. During this process the methodology of the second phase will also be outlined by the P1.

Phase 2– based on the research done in phase 1 the partners test the original antidiscrimination pack. They learn themselves to use it and organize creative and empowering activities with young people aged 15-30 at risk of social exclusion, members of communities who are marginalized and are more likely to be exposed to discrimination online or face-to-face. Participants of the pilot groups will receive training followed by digital sessions, during which they can express their thoughts and reactions in form of short videos. In this way the project gives voice to the mainly affected and integrates their ideas in a practical tool designed for actions. The original anti-discrimination pack can be in this way also improved by new ideas and experiences. The original antidiscrimination pack enriched by our amendments (Anti discrimination Pack 2.0 – further called AP) will be accompanied by a new web platform that will include recent case studies floating in SNS, short videos, collected by the partners and a methodological guide divided into a theoretical frame and an integrated practical part with concrete steps to be followed.

Phase 3 foresees a 4-month dissemination process during which local dissemination events will take place across the partner countries as well as follow-up trainings provided by participating youth workers.
These actions will be organized and attended by altogether 15 youth workers from PL, DE, ES, UK and CY and tutored by 2 educators from the mentoring CEPS from Spain and 1 facilitator from Dramblys. Within the project frameworks will be organized i.a. 3 transnational meetings of staff and a training event for youth workers involved.

Click here for all the information

www.antidiscriminationpack.eu