Virtual Action for Human Rights Education

On February 5th- 11th 2019 volunteers representing Youth Center “Perspektiva” attended the Erasmus + training course “Virtual Action for Human Rights Education” which was held in Istanbul, Turkey. Throughout the training course participants developed their skills in identifying hate speech online and offline. Furthermore the project encourages participants in becoming online activists for human rights. Throughout the whole duration of the training course, there was a special focus in raising awareness about human rights principles and promote a vision of the internet which reflects these principles.

Young people from several countries such as Albania, Turkey, North Macedonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, Italy, Romania became together to learn more about this topic based on the principles of non formal education such as exercises, games, group dynamics, self directed learning, among others. These activities were implemented from the Compass, WeCAN, and Bookmarks books by Council of Europe.

Attending this training course, offered them the opportunity to to network with several international and regional organization whose work is focused on human right protection and empowering victims of online hate speech. This gave them the chance to learn theory and how to put this theory in practice in combating and preventing hate speech through human rights education and encourage empathy for groups or individuals who are or may be targets of hate speech online and offline.

Based on their opinion, the experience gained from attending the training course, was very valuable as it was an exchange of information and knowledge, as much as it was an exchange between cultures and emotions. They had the opportunity to learn how to deconstruct hate speech through case to case analysis.

In the end participants were equipped with a Youth Pass. Click here to find out more.