As one of the outcomes from the previous process which aimed at introducing youth to the topic of hate speech and hate crime, we identified the need for more active work and collaboration with the young people from the municipalities Lipkovo, Kumanovo and Staro Nagoricane.  Since Kumanovo is an urban municipality and Lipkovo and Staro Nagoricane are rural municipalities, there was a huge need to transfer the knowledge and to engage more youth from the rural areas. Additionally, the ethnic background of the youth from the different municipalities is quite diverse: in Lipkovo the majority of the youth is Albanian, in Kumanovo it´s Macedonian and in Staro Nagoricane the majority is Serbian; thus intercultural learning and combating hate among these diverse ethnicities surges as an important topic to address.

As a result, three training courses were delivered to the youth form Kumanovo, Lipkovo and Staro Nagoricane on the topics of hate speech, discrimination, human rights, and hate crime. They were organized by CID and supported by OSCE Mission in Skopje and happened on the 25th, 27th and 30th of May 2016.

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The first training was held in Kumanovo; the participants worked on the topics of intercultural learning and created a dynamic group, furthermore they learned about the concept of human rights and were introduced to the topic of hate speech. The next training was implemented in the municipality of Staro Nagoricane in which participants got to know the consequences of hate speech and hate crime, as well as worked on different mechanisms for reacting to it and prevent it. The last training was delivered in Lipkovo and tackled the ways for approaching and preventing hate speech and hate crime.

These training courses offered the participants the space to develop a common action plan that the group will implement in their local communities in the upcoming months.

Florim Rexhepi