News

• What does the norm around gender look like? How does it affect us personally? And how do we think it affects the youth we work with? How can gender be related to other oppressions, like if you are a woman in a certain age, class, skin colour or ethnicity and so on? We will use methods with intersectionality perspective and that also deals with power theory. In this section we are going to go through different method books

• What are the laws and statistics in our countries, compared with the charter of Human Rights? What do we encounter as youth leaders, when it comes to gender inequality? How should we change our methods when we work with youth? Through different interactive exercises we will try to answer these questions. We will collect the results and share it with each other after the training.

• One day of text-writing sessions to create posters around gender.

• Ice Breaking and get to know each other
• Energisers
• Tour in local area.
• Evening activity

Photo by Juliana Zapata for CIVIS from http://www.intersektionalitet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_0507.jpg

During 29^th-30^th of November Safaa Daoud and Carola Ståhl at the international Loesje office attended a conference arranged by the peace organisation CIVIS in Gothenburg to discuss the concept “Intersectionality” and how it can be used by organisations that work with subjects such as gender equality, anti-racism, diverse sexualities and other categories that could be a target of oppressive norms. The organisation for the Swedish united anti-discrimination bureau lists seven categories that they focus on. They are religion, sex, gender, functionality, ethnicity, age and sexuality.

Intersectionality is a term that was coined by scholars, from  the black working class feminist movement in the US. They were questioning the kind of feminism that was predominant then, which they thought only advocated for the rights of white middle class women. They believed that in general, we cannot only deal with one struggle against oppression within one norm. They rather saw that all predominant norms were intersected. All the norms enforce each other and are in need of each other to exist. Here is some easy reading about the term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality_theory#

A very interesting example that was given in one of the lectures by Paulina de los Reyes, one of the most distinguished scholars within intersectional research in Sweden, was the “Millionsvenska” or “Förortsvenska”. It is a name for the kind of Swedish that was created in the suburbs of the big cities of Sweden. The creators and speakers of this dialect are mainly young men and women, referred to as immigrants and un-educated youngsters coming from socioeconomically poor families. In other words, all bundled into the category, “ troublesome young immigrants from the suburb”. Millionsvenskan was picked up by a magazine called Gringo, which was dealing with issues of racism and sexism. A huge debate was started, about what kind of Swedish is correct Swedish. There were advocates for the ‘correct’ kind of Swedish, saying that promoting the ‘wrong’ kind of Swedish will only keep the people living in the suburbs to “selling bananas”. And that the language was sexist. The reply came from advocates of the Millionsvenska that the language was in fact inclusive of women, but that picture didn’t fit the prejudice of young men from the suburb. A female journalist also replied that apparently the ‘correct Swedish’ advocators weren’t aware that women like her who are speaking “Millionsvenska”, happen to be ‘successful’. Conclusively, through an intersectional analysis, one can see that the advocators of the ‘correct Swedish’ weren’t only confirming prejudice of men with migration background in the suburbs being more sexist than white middle class men, thus assuming that women in the suburbs automatically are more oppressed. In a class-based society, it is implied that selling bananas in a market is a “failure”.  This example shows how a problem usually is multi-layered, and how categories could intersect. Noteworthy to this example is that Kiezdeutsch, the German equivalent of Millionsvenska, is today classified as a dialect.

At the conference, we dealt with questions of how we could implement an intersectional thinking into our work. We at Loesje believe that this term could be useful in our network. Many organisations expressed that they were already working in an intersectional matter, without knowing that there was a term for it. And this is how it feels a little bit with Loesje. The posters are dealing with so many different themes. The texts are questioning different oppressive norms and wants everybody’s freedom, no matter which categories people are forced into. We would like to go further with this perspective, and consciously implement it, not only in the posters, but in other projects we are involved in.

Now Loesje International has been asked to participate in yet another project from the organisation CIVIS that initiated the conference, where we would be part of a long term web-based  training in intersectionality, this together with other organisations in Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina respectively. To know more about CIVIS project about the subject, you can visit the website here http://www.intersektionalitet.org/and get an English version.

Safaa

Last Wednesday, Loesje’s Berlin office was invited as representing a European Volunteer Service receiving organization by the Jugend in Aktion at a day aimed to promote volunteering.

The day was arranged by the German ministry for family affairs. Safaa, Artur and Rola were there to tell about a volunteer’s role at the Berlin office. We gave two speed writing workshops and recommend EVS to some interested people.

We also had the opportunity to meet the people that work at Jugend in Aktion who are behind many approved Loesje project applications, and had a nice chat with them.

Loesje International
in cooperation with
the Directorate of Youth and Sport
of the Council of Europe

European Youth Center Budapest

21^st-27^th of November, 2011

 

Loesje Internationaland Loesje Armenia in cooperation with the Directorate of Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe announce this call for participants for the study Session “Why do not change prejudices into experiences” taking place 21-27 November 2011 (including arrival and departure days) at European Youth Center Budapest.

Loesje is an international freedom of speech organization. Its charter is to spread creativity, positive criticism, ideas, philosophical ponderings and thoughts on current events by way of short slogans on posters, signed by the Dutch girl ‘Loesje’.Since the beginning of 1990’s and even more since 2003 Loesje International has initiated and organized a large number of international youth exchanges, trainings, Summer Camps and seminars relating to many different themes, including freedom of speech, diversity and Human Rights to solve problems and empower youth. We have already realized many international gatherings bringing together diverse groups of participants, working on creating a joint product and a multiplier effect outlasting the project itself.

 

Aims ando bjectives

The training course aims to create creative tools and to empower youth leaders to work with young people helping them to undo their stereotypes and learn how to live in diverse and multicultural societies.

 

Objectives:

• To become aware and understand the concepts of respect, and
  appreciation for cultural diversity,

• To explore the topic of prejudices and stereotypes and how it
  looks like in the different participating countries,

• To create creative tools to work on the topic of prejudices and stereotypes,

• To reflect upon participants’ own position on the topic of  
  stereotypes and cultural diversity,

•  To develop the necessary skills in order to implement the follow up initiatives and to continue work in the area of international youth exchanges of young people

 

Facilitators:

• Carola Ståhl, Loesje International

• Evan Sedgwick-Jell, Loesje International

• Agnieszka Byrczek, Cazalla Intercultural

• Hussein ElShafei, project manager of the Alexandria Cancer Research Cluster in Egypt & founder Loesje Egypt

• Hranush Shahnazaryan, Course Director, head of Loesje Armenia

 

Profile of the participants

• Active member of youth organizations (volunteers or employees) working with international projects

• Interested in Loesje creative methods and ready to promote Council of Europe’s  values

• Between 18 and 30 years old

• Able to work in English

• Committed to participate actively in the full duration of the study session

• Committed to contribute to the follow-up activity

• Be a national or resident of one of the member states of the Council of Europe.   

 

Application,procedure and selection of participants

The application form must be sent to armenia@loesje.org. The deadline is 01.10.2011. The preparatory team will select thirty participants on the basis of the profile outlined above. It will try as far as possible to respect the organizations’ priorities, but also to ensure a balance between sexes, geographical regions, different types of experiences, cultural backgrounds and organizations, institutions and projects.  A waiting list may be established. Candidates will be informed whether their application has been accepted, rejected, or if they have been put on the waiting list, by 1ts October 2011.

 

Financial and practical conditions of participation

Travel expenses

Travel expenses and visa fees for the Study Session in Budapest are reimbursed according to the rules of the Council of Europe. Only the participants who attend the entire training course can be reimbursed. The payment will be made in cash during the study session or by bank transfer after the study session.

Accommodation

Board  and lodging  for  the residential  training  seminar will  be  provided  and  paid for by  the Council of Europe.

Enrolment fee

An enrolment fee of 50 Euros is payable by each participant. This amount will be deducted from the amount to be reimbursed for travel expenses or paid at the EYCB during the residential seminar.

Working languages

English will the working language of the Study Session.