Month: March 2019

UNITED COnference on Coexistence

Good news, for those who did not apply yet, we are extending the deadline for nominations to take part in our upcoming UNITED conference, which is now 31 March. You can find more information about the conference’s topic and programme here.

You can nominate your delegates by using this form. Be aware of the financial conditions of taking part in this conference. Please note that only the selected participants will receive an answer with more details regarding the conference.

What can you expect if you take part in a UNITED Conference?

A large number of fellow Human Rights activists
Information on good practices
Possibilities on network building
Ideas for funding and partnerships
Open discussions on relevant topics
Local context and a wonderful experience of Albania!

About the Conference

UNITED gladly invites you to nominate Delegates for our upcoming UNITED Conference near Tirana, Albania, taking place from the 15 to 20 May 2019. The conference will focus on coexistence, not only as a general value of understanding and peaceful living within a community, but as a practical strategy that can help facing the current challenges of Europe on many different levels.

Since coexistence is a broad topic and can involve several aspects of life, UNITED has decided to make the working and understanding easier, so to facilitate the learning and the communicating process. For this reason, the conference will include:

Panel discussions with experts that will help clarify what coexistence means.
Successful examples and good practices of coexistence.
Focal working groups on Communication, Campaign, Advocacy, Education and Community Building as basis for a coexistence strategy.
Practical workshops on how to raise funds for a strategy.
Chance for networking and initiating joint actions to pave the way for future cooperation.
We look forward to your nomination!

Organizational change training for more diversity

“Now I have a clearer idea of how we can really make change processes, the last time I had an overview, now I really understand,” said one of the participants of the training “Be the Change” which took place in Berlin 2 weeks ago. About 20 colleagues from all over Europe came together for 5 days to train accompanying change processes towards a racism-critical and diversity-sensitive organization. The training was facilitated by Joana Ebbinghaus and Simon Mohn.

During the training programme, various models and practical tools of Organizational Development were introduced and applied to the participants’ own organizations. Special rituals were a wake-up dance every morning and the reflection with a learning partner every evening. Apart from conveying new ideas for self-led organizational change, the participants also tested the feasibility of the models in practices, since they are meant to be comprised in a manual afterwards. The latter ought to have a look on facilitating organizational change through the lense of diversity.

The training course “Be the Change” was an accompanying measure of the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 project #star_e.  “Standing Together against Racism in Europe” is a 3 year project coordinated by ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit in cooperation with 8 partner organizations from different corners of Europe, one of them being SOCIUS. The partners in this project strongly believe in the credible, holistic fight against racism at all levels of their work. Together with the experts from SOCIUS they currently work on the creation of a manual on how to accompany diversity-oriented change processes in international youth and voluntary service organizations.

Call you for action for the European Week Against Racism (16-24 March 2019)

We call you for action to get UNITED and start planning activities for the upcoming European Week Against Racism (16-24 March 2019).

So now, we are very curious to hear what you have planned!

We ask you to organise your activities around the theme of face-to-face meetings — to get people from all backgrounds together locally and talk, sing, dance, eat, play, meet to celebrate diversity. Take a look at our UNITED Action Week Against Racism website (http://weekagainstracism.eu/join-the-campaign/suggested-activities-2019/) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/UnitedActionWeek/) for some inspiration and great ideas from previous campaigns.

Europe-wide Activity Map

Perhaps you have some great suggestions we haven’t thought of? Please share with us and help your UNITED family members all over Europe to get their creative juices flowing and motivated to start their own local campaigns!

As you know, we are planning to create a Europe-wide Activity Map, so we will share your local activities there to show the world that we are a UNITED and welcoming Europe, where diversity is celebrated and discrimination has no place!

Please let us know what you are planning for the European Week Against Racism by filling in the following form before 10 March! That would really help us in organising our work and setting up the Map in time ahead of the Action Week.
http://weekagainstracism.eu/join-the-campaign/get-active-and-order/

AUS participated in training course Be The Change!

Let’s “Be the change”!
Ragnhildur and 20 other representatives of 10 youth NGO’s from all over Europe participated in the training course on “Diversity Oriented Change Management” which toook place in Berlin from 18-22nd of February. The course was organized by ICJA in coooperation with SOCIUS an expert organization on organisational development in the frame of the STAR_E  partnership project. We reflected, used methods and tools and got inspiration on changes needed so that we can truly become more inclusive and diverse in our organisations.  #ausmoments #icye #icja #star_e