On the 19th of May, Maailmanvaihto – ICYE Finland, together with its co-operation organisations Allianssi Youth Exchanges and the Finnish Branch of Service Civil International, organized an online workshop (3 h) “Together towards equality in youth camp activities!” to introduce the handbooks published in the STAR E project.
The workshop concentrated on the handbook “Standing Together Against Racism: A Training Handbook!” and was meant for those who work with young people or study youth field. 22 people including the organizers got together. The workshop was originally designed as a longer face to face meeting on the Day Against Racism in March, but was transferred into an online workshop due to the coronavirus situation. The meeting took place in Discord, an online platform for communities with voice and video chat features.
The meeting began with introductions and familiarizing oneself with the STAR E project. Also we got information about the organizers of the workshop the type of activities they or their networks have recently carried out related to the theme. Afterwards participants tried two exercises from the handbook as further developed versions to fit into online use: “Soon to be outdated”and “Timelines”.
All the planned workshop contents were carried out, but the schedule unfortunately got some delays from technical problems such as freezing of the video connection and breaks in the speech sound. Those also caused some distraction. Hopefully though the participants in any case got an idea on what the handbooks are about and some inspiration for using them – both in face to face contexts and in online settings. The facilitators of the workshop, who were volunteers and staff members of Maailmanvaihto – ICYE Finland, gained valuable insights into facilitating anti-racism activities online.
The organizers of the workshop co-operate in Finland as Kansainvälisen Vapaaehtoistyön Verkosto (KaVa – network of international volunteering), which aims at advancing quality and responsible international volunteering. The event was evaluated as a positive step in that direction!