The project Youth Spaces Free of Rumours. Youngsters protagonists against discrimination will promote experimental pathways to youth activation aimed to foster young people’s civic protagonism and their intellectual and social potential to fight discrimination within youth spaces, establishing “free of prejudice” environments.
In particular, the project will experiment actions of youth protagonism as concerns the fight against discrimination by applying the innovative “anti-rumours” methodology developed by the Council of Europe, of which ICEI has been one of the major supporters in Italy since 2018.
The initiative will be implemented in 8 Italian municipalities members of the Italian network of Intercultural Cities (Rete Città del Dialogo), of which ICEI is the technical coordinator.
The project has two main objectives:
- In the short term, it aims to promote innovative and experimental pathways of non-formal education to enable young people to re-appropriate spaces and to establish 16 “free of prejudice” youth centres in Italian cities.
- In the long term, through collaboration with local administrations and non-profit bodies, the project will enhance the skills and tools applied by youth workers and municipal staffs, setting the conditions to strengthen networking and to adopt effective practices in favour of young beneficiaries
- Beneficiaries of the project are:
- young people aged 16-25 with a focus on youth at risk of social exclusion
- youth workers from youth centres.
Project activities
To reach the above objectives, the following activities will be promoted:
- Training 16 youth workers from youth centres on non-formal education to fight discrimination, in particular in the anti-rumours methodology
- Implementing anti-rumours youth actions in 16 youth centres, in 8 Italian cities, against discrimination and creating inclusive, “free of prejudice” environments
- Production of anti-rumours communication materials by young people and implementation of a “peer-to-peer” communication campaign
- Youth activation and anti-discrimination events within public spaces open to local communities in 8 cities
- Disseminating the experience and establishing a national network of “anti-rumours” young people.