Last years more than 1 million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe, many fleeing wars in Africa and the Middle East. This increasing migration flow sparked a crisis as Members States (MSs) had difficulty to cope with the influx, and causing division in the European Union (EU) over how to deal best with migrant smuggling, resettling people and integration (Europol, 2017). As the migration flows continue to rise in Europe, so do anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric and instances of harsh treatment of these communities. There has been a clear and global increase in hate incidents and crimes, where both public/private entities and individuals use hate speech against migrants and refugees both online and offline. Rhetorical excesses and xenophobic hatred can give rise to a climate of prejudice, discrimination and violence. Both traditional and new media can play an important role in conditioning public perception of migrant populations and their social integration by providing objective reporting. However, both intentional and unintentional discriminatory portrayals of migrants and refugees are often found in the media, thus negatively influencing people’s views of these communities (EU-UNAOC, 2016). In this context, Internet and social media are omnipresent communication tools, through which citizens share information and interact by expressing their perceptions, needs and opinions on a myriad of topics. Following this direction, on 31th May 2016, the European Commission presented with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube a “Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online”. The four IT companies accepted to share the European Commission's and EU Member States' commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online and all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. The project “Tackle Hate” aims to equip youth workers with the skills and knowledge necessary to develop practical tools and counter-arguments to online hate speech and in preventing and fighting xenophobia against migrants and refugees. The project has been designed over 20 months to happen in 3 major consecutive phases using the PDCA methodology (plan, do, check, act): Phase 1 - Setting up the project, Planning & Research phase - we had received 218 questionnaires and made decisions in what to focus on the 4 modules. Phase 3 - Project activities implementation phase and realisation of IO1 - a e-learning course of 4 modules that has been completed by more than 100 youth workers. Phase 3 - Design of IO2 - the publication of a digital guide, local activities, project evaluation phase, closure. The following impact is intended: -The project is directly aimed to youth workers/youth leaders in the field of human rights and hate speech education. They will benefit from educational content to improve their knowledge and skills regarding to online hate speech and capacity to raise awareness and provide counter-arguments to online hate speech. -The youth workers will benefit in terms of motivation, commitment, tools and methods. Their level of skills will improve and these skills will be also transferable to other youth workers in other organisations. - Youth organisations involved in learning activities will benefit from improved youth work: more committed and motivated youth workers, more consistency between regardless of youth workers involved in learning activities. This results in creating more impact in the awareness raising activities, improve learning impact, extended learning opportunities on hate speech phenomenon and eventually more sustainable results and impact of the activities. -Organisations involved will benefit from improve processes and results, therefore optimize available resources for new activities such as educating youth to be aware of the online hate speech threats. The project aims to contribute to sustainability and capacity building of the organisations. The project is designed to result in long term and self-sustaining results, creating a positive impact in youth organisations daily job and on youth workers tackling online hate speech. Therefore, the project will eventually result in the creation of self-sustained initiatives and activities in the field of youth. The partners plan to perform some follow-up activities such as: -It is also expected that good practices and experience matured will lead the partners’ organisations to the creation of variety of new e-learning courses. -New trained partners’ youth workers will transfer and implement all the knowledge acquired becoming online activists against online hate speech, creating local and online awareness campaigns and delivering workshops for youth for explaining them what is hate speech and how to tackle it.

The main objective of the project was to create a training tool capable of responding to the need todevelop intercultural interpersonal skills and abilities for operators and professionals who in their daily work do find themselves operating in multicultural contexts and with minority groups. As a result improve the quality of theirs intervention towards beneficiaries, not only in the context of youth organizations, but also in other contextseducational, such as school, and professional in general. This objective was fulfilled with the realization ofMOOC “Union of Minorities. Educational tools for the European Cultural Mosaic ”, a product with characteristicstechniques (its accessibility to a broad audience of learners) and content (theoretical and practical aspects on the topics ofmulticulturalism and the construction of inclusive educational pathways), stands as an instrument of education and trainingshared with an intersectoral approach, which combines methodologies, tools and knowledge typical of educationformal and non-formal education, coming from the public and private sector, and that, addressing the topic ofmulticulturalism in the broad sense (not only with reference to its most evident aspects linked to belonging to an ethnic groupor practicing a different language), offers a space for deepening professional and personal skillsdeemed necessary to understand and operate in European and national social contexts for which it becomes fundamentalpossess an intercultural approach based on recognition and respect for differences.The MOOC was the result of a path that saw the synergistic collaboration between the worlds of formal and non-formal educationformal, private and public and which was built throughout the project life cycle through specific contributionsof the work group and the study visits that took place during the first year, during which they werevisit various realities and it has been possible to observe, learn and evaluate different experiences and ways of working. TheObservation process established during the study visits allowed the collection of data used to identifythe topics found among the most important in the various areas and finalize the modular structure of the course following onepedagogical logic identified by the work group. It is for this reason that the MOOC includes chapters that they offerimportant theoretical ideas to better understand and reflect on topics such as multiculturalism, globalization,colonialism, the concept of minority, stereotypes and processes of stigmatization, whose mastery is fundamentalimportance not only when working with young people but in all those contexts in which different cultures meet andvarious differences, to create a more inclusive society, and at the same time functional. This theoretical basis represents thefoundations on which a pedagogical path was then built starting from the necessary personal skillsto learners to then be able to decline them in their respective professional fields, we continue towards the learning of methodologiesfor the management of groups, specific approaches and methods for working with minorities (applicable to different target groups, andreplicable in different contexts) to provide insights on the importance of implementing systematic and structured actions by workingon the web, and on the importance of evaluation as a tool to reflect on one's own activities / initiatives and then arrange oneselfto learn to increase the quality of their interventions in order to achieve more effective and responsive resultsreal needs of the target with whom you work.Through this project and the production of the online course, and its dissemination to an audience of users that goes beyond thethe world of youth and NGOs, therefore, we wanted to contribute in a concrete way to provide an additional tool forimprove the skills and individual knowledge of professionals engaged in work with cultural minoritiesgenerically intended to improve the quality of the services they offer to the beneficiaries, but also to spreadinterest and attention to the theme of intercultural education and recognition of the other as a source ofmutual enrichment and basis for building solidary relationships within non-monolithic societies and communitiescharacterized by an extreme variety of linguistic, cultural and behavioral codes.

Living Land project develops an experimental framework for Youth Employability and EngagementApproach, promoting youth worker’s capabilities. LL aims to support and enhance young skills andcompetences through a link between social workers (in the PA- Public Administration) and youthworkers (in NPO- Non Profit Organization). This approach uses youth work as an occasion tosupport vulnerable young group entering in the job market, but also feeling part of their communities.PA (municipalities, province, mountain community/parks) work together with the local NPO detectingvulnerable situations (NEET, unemployed young, economic and social disadvantages, disabilities,school drop-out), offering inclusion activities, bringing them closer to the job market. These activitiesaim to involve young in apprenticeship or traineeship experience linked with social and citizenshipskills empowerment. The young involved become part of their community, with a strategic role and aleadership, promoting their empowerment and the recognition of their formal and non-formal skillsand capabilities. It also fosters young assessment of transversal skills, in a Life Skills perspective.The 2 years’ project develops an innovative methodology at a local level, able to empower youthemployability services and youth workers’ competences. We’d like to build a model accessible,replicable by different bodies or groups (NPO or PA) in order to facilitate any kind of non-formalactivities to be carried out locally, valorizing, mapping and linking existing experiences for young. Thekey objective is to innovate youth workers approach, taking in charge vulnerable young. The otherkey objective is the creation of intervention model (LL Web Platform and Guidelines KIT) aimed tostrength skills of youth workers and policy makers. The project would like to create an effective andoperational tool to implement employability policies at local, national and European level. The localand final events and dissemination activities will be strategic in order to communicate and inform theeffective impact that the project could arise. During the transnational meeting, partner will exchangepoint of views and will define the content of the intellectual outputs. The training will be useful to 20youth workers ready to run out the pilot test locally. LL Guidelines KIT (01 output) will be a tool fortraining and it will contain examples, best practices and information about youth employabilitystrategies. LL Web Platform (02 output) is an open access platform, with an easy and comfortableapproach to be used by each youth workers or bodies (PA or NPO) to implement activities for younglocally. LL is based on the young needs expressed in several year’s experience by the partners.Especially the needs to imagine a possible future and find a place in the world, giving meaning totheir time; to know and test skills and competences, getting involved in an adult perspective; to havean adult key player as a reference that welcomes and accompanies them during the experience andbeyond; to share experiences with peers and belong to a real group; to be recognized and discoveredin their capabilities by the adult community; to learn new things, through a theoretical-practicaltraining, and to compete in new contexts, different for example from school and family. LL stressesthe youth spirit strengthening the capabilities of youth workers in charge to support them.The project, through a pilot action, at the end and after the project end involves at least 1 PA in eachCountry and 3 NPOs collecting and uploading to the platform some experiences addressed at leastto 150 young among Europe. The project is based on the recent EU reflections about Traineeship and Apprenticeship systems, whose relevance and priority is emphasized by the EU documents andnational local policies, such as The Guidebook for Policy Planners and Practitioners, but also reflectsthe suggestions of National Ministries regarding the construction of stronger competencies of youthworkers in charge of these measures, who play a critical role in helping young people make asmoother transition from school to work (STW) or to find the right way to express their competencesand skills. Empirical evidence suggests that both types of schemes can significantly improve youngpeople’s employment prospects by contributing to the acquisition of work-related skills andexperience in close alignment with employer requirements, leading to nationally recognizedqualifications, enhancing young people’s links to the labour market, and providing young people withvaluable first work experience. The consortium, involving 5 partners in 5 EU countries, isrepresentative of a wide spectrum of Countries and of skills thanks to the involvement of importantand articulated professional profiles and experiences.

"After gaining independence Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have started developing open society and building a democratic state. Since democratic society implies basic principles such as pluralism and prohibition of discrimination, struggle for equality and human rights have been brought to a public discourse. Throughout the last decade we have witnessed an increasing trend of polarization in Caucasus and Europe. Higher incidences of violent extremism hate crime and hostility towards different groups especially manifested through hate speech are becoming worryingly frequent in everyday lives. Several reports pointed the rise of violent extremism (Amnesty International ¨Annual Report 2016-2017”, Human Rights Watch ¨World Report 2017¨). In 2010s multiple international and civil society organisations have reported higher incidences of anti-western propaganda, which attacks the liberal values that underpin human rights. The strongest anti-western narratives try to convince the audiences that the Western World is imposing policies and values incompatible with the national traditions and values. Through this approach, especially the rights of LGBTQI community are being under a constant attack, together with efforts for promoting gender equality, rights of ethnic and religious minorities and the creators of these narratives systematically incite hatred and encourage nationalism, prejudices and discrimination, and also undermine other fundamental human rights. Due to the unconsolidated media environment of Caucasus, these dangerous messages spread among wide public and combating them requires not only constantly debunking specific cases of disinformation and fake news, but mainly systematic education of the population. Freedom House report ""Nations in Transit 2017"" has alarming findings regarding central and eastern Europe – more than a half of the countries in the report have declined in their Democracy Scores. With its second focal point, this project identifies human rights education and education for democratic citizenship (EDC/HRE) as one of the key tools to develop critical consciousness and empower society against propaganda. “Human rights education - helps to develop the communication skills and informed critical thinking essential to a democracy. It examines human rights issues without bias and from diverse perspectives through a variety of educational practices” (Human Rights Here and Now: Celebrating the UDHR, ed. Nancy Flowers (Minneapolis: Human Rights Educators’ Network, Amnesty International USA, 1998). The project used Council of Europe materials (Bookmarks, We CAN!) to create a know-how on taking action against violent extremism, hate speech, anti-western propaganda through human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, media education and literacy and counter and alternative narratives.Project aimed to develop media literacy and critical consciousness of youth in Caucasus through advocating EDC/HRE and confront narratives discrediting the concept of liberal democracy, rule of law, human rights;Objectives:To train the fellows in EDC/HRE and media education;To create educational opportunities for young people in EDC/HRE and increase their participation in civil society;To create the practice of using counter and alternative narratives with young people to discredit propaganda and hate speech;To make Council of Europe educational tools more accessible and disseminate it with civil society organizations;To create practices of counter and alternative narratives against propaganda and hate speech and disseminate it in international and regional civil society organisations;To promote and advocate for EDC/HRE European Charter and to create cross-sector and multi-level cooperation opportunitie"

ContextIn training and educational contexts it happens often that well intentioned people reinforce narratives that are oppressive for certain groups. This sometimes leads to tension and distancing where we would like to use those moments as an opportunity for critical self reflection and connection. Taxonomically speaking, knowledge is relatively easy to gain, skills can be obtained in a short time, but reflection on ethical values and attitudes need more time and effort. Reflection is vital in our work on human rights and inclusion so we need effective tools for that. Creativity and arts are a tool capable of such change.In times where divisions between people are growing stronger and wider, and a need arises to deal with differences of values and beliefs in a way that is connecting instead of dividing. Reflective practices and critical thinking are needed to improve our practices and foster personal growth. Especially in times where COVID-19 has a huge impact on our daily life, time spent online is rising, with questions emerging about the effects of this on our (social) lifes and growing segregation. Digital environments call for and provide opportunities for innovative ways of implementing reflective practices and critical thinking. This project aims at developing critical self-reflection on behaviours and attitudes, to be able to accept vulnerability and move beyond hostile, defensive and aggressive reaction patterns toward inclusive attitudes and open-minded behaviours.Aim More inclusive youth work and educational settings by promoting attitudinal and behavioural change that leads to a more equal and safe environment for all youth.ObjectivesCreating space for differences in experience and worldview, in constructive discussions that foster empathy;opportunities for self-reflection and personal development.;foster critical thinking and open-mindedness in society;improve the digital competences in youth work;promote creativity and resilience in learning spaces;use art as a way to express and reflect;focus on our values and attitudes when dealing with competences.MethodsWe will use desk research to identify and analyse already existing games for the resources in the toolkit.For the digital game we will use creative collaborative methods as well as interdisciplinary tools to create an integrative game. The creative process will be based on the structure of design thinking: content creation and programming, testing and developing, reflecting.Creativity and (participatory) arts as a method of critical reflection beyond the theoretical realm.Activities3 transnational meetings with to the core team and technical support;1 training event for participant from associated partners to test the products;several local activities where the products will be implemented;events for dissemination and visibility;follow-up phase to assess the impact and continue dissemination. ResultsA digital game that will be disseminated alongside a toolkit with additional resources, background of the game, how to work with it, and implementation for work on diversity and inclusion. Both these outputs will be digitally available on already existing platforms, such as the websites of the project partners.ImpactThe impact of the project will be a start of a behavioural and attitudinal change. These kinds of changes are not reached overnight, though. So the primary impact will be an enhanced awareness amongst participants of their own learning opportunities regarding fragilities, power structures, and the like. They will gain insight in the ways in which to question one’s own reactions and will gain observational skills to be able to postpone reactions and thus change their own behavioural patterns. Long-term benefitsPlayers of the game will have the tools to explore their own position in an intersectional working field long after the end of this project. They can revisit the game any time they want and work at further personal development.The secondary impact will be that participants working with youth or in education will change their attitudes and behaviours over time, in a way that benefits the people they work with and creates a more inclusive context.