breaking the ice

I spent my last week in Strasbourg, preparing and running together with friends and colleagues the Symposium “all different – all equal”. The Symposium was living from the expertise and enthusiasm the participants brought with them. It was a real motivation factor for my personal work in the youth forum.

Unfortunately the end was not so nice. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe disagreed with the outcomes of the symposium and told the participants working hard for the conclusions and concrete results over 4 days quite frankly so. Not that this has a large political impact but they way he did it and the way he ruined the motivation of the people was a disaster. Several people very really sad, angry or frustrated about it and had the feeling they were wasting time during the symposium.

On the other hand he will not be the last one that we have to struggle with. The message of the campaign is to lower the levels of acceptance for humiliation and discrimination. By far not everyone is at the same level of awareness for Human Rights, diversity and participation and how those things are interlinked. There is a lot of personal and political struggle ahead of us. But this discouragement was also to a large extent a uniting element!

I hope that people were able to regain their motivation, through talks afterwards, through the party that was really nice and through the networks and friendships they have built during the seminar!