Tools Against Racism

Today we had the last day of our workshop here in Bilbao. We continued with brainstorming and eventually ended up with not four but six new tools against racism. We had also an opportunity to get some feedback from the teachers of Jesuitak Indautxu. And that feedback was good! Happy to plan the next workshop in Ireland but now we have to say sad goodbyes for a few months.

Yesterday was a day full of thoughts! We saw a wakening documentary about refugee children, with some of them staying in refugee camps for years. It was also very eye-opening to hear about the racism that students face at school. Ane Irazabal, an international journalist, gave us a lot to think about during her presentation.

Happy Easter! This is a perfect time to reminisce our last week's amazing and eye-opening workshop in Hardenberg! On the last day we toured around the school and presented our tools to the teachers who gave us feedback on how they would work. In one of the pictures there are also posters created by the students of Alfa-college. At the end of the workshop we created a mindmap where everyone wrote what they had learned during the workshop. As you can see, we all learned a lot during these days.

Our next workshop will take place in Spain in the autumn. We are really looking forward to another educational and fun workshop!

On the third day of the workshop, we focused on anti-racist pedagogy and pilots which will be implemented tomorrow. We discussed the anti-racist pedagogy from several perspectives, for example where the knowledge is coming from, how to integrate anti-racism into the content, and what type of processes and practices are needed in the colleges. We are excited about our pilots because it's a good chance to check other teachers' opinions and what kind of tools can be utilised in practice to make a change. Looking forward to the last day of the workshop! Thank you Ruut Kaukinen again for an excellent day and practical training as a whole!

The first day of the workshop at Varia! The excellent key lecture presented by Ulkar Aghayeva from the Rauhankasvatusinstituutti ry (The Peace Education Institute) raised lots of thoughts and let us to reflect the multifaceted phenomenon of racism, privileges, anti-racism, and raised awareness of the importance of the institutional racism. The good starting point for learning. We analysed also a survey from Varia and Mercuria colleges staff in which it's possible notice there is lack of competence to detect and intervene racism. Active discussion of the definitions of racism, discrimination, work related issues in vocational education. Communication and language are central. Thank you very much facilitator / trainer Ruut Kaukinen! To be continued!