Project place: Innsbruck, Austria
Project dates: 01.-07.12.2022.
Deadline for applying: URGENT!
BACKGROUND OF THE SEMINAR
White volunteers want to save the world. A lot of young people in Europe approach volunteering organisations with a well intended “white savior” motivation: They want to “help” the Global South by doing a voluntary service in the Global South, often wanting to work with children. Many potential volunteers don’t understand the global power relations that stand behind such a motivation: European colonialism for centuries has exploited people, land and resources in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania and the consequences of this are more than visible until today. Also today, European governments and companies are contributing to and driving global injustices. Volunteering organisations need to be antiracist. European volunteering organisations that send volunteers to the Global South need extensive knowledge on the historical, political and economic context that takes place in order to be able to make decisions whether they should send a volunteer to the Global South. If they do send someone, they need good educational methods to talk about critical whiteness, racism, global injustices and the power structures these are embedded in.They need knowledge on how (not) to promote volunteering in the Global South, p.e. on social media. Sessions in this training will revolve around the following questions:
What is the white savior complex? How is it related to colonial history?
Which motivations do European volunteers have for volunteering in the Global South? How can we deal with these?
How to prepare European volunteers for volunteering in the Global South?
How to change neocolonial structures in your organisation? How to show solidarity with the Global South?
Outcome: With this training, we expect you to be able to start institutional changes in order to make your organisation more ethical, antiracist and anticolonial. We also expect you to do follow-up workshops with the contents you learn in this training in your sending organisation, e.g. by taking over the preparation of volunteers or by doing a workshop on white savior complex. This is part of a bigger project: This training is part of the project “European Youth for Global Solidarity”, funded by the European Commission through Erasmus+. SCI Austria, as part of this project, also organised the training “Beyond Neocolonialism” in Vienna in July 2022. As an outcome of the two activities, we will create an adapted version of the toolkit “The Power Behind Good Intentions”, which SCI Austria has been creating with a series of postcolonial seminars in the past few years.
PARTICIPANTS’ PROFILE
The project aims to gather 30 participants. Our main target group are people who are actively involved in sending, preparing or promoting voluntary services of Europeans going to the Global South. All participants selected for this project should meet the following criteria
Be 18 years old or older
Live in one of the countries of our partner organisations: Albania, Austria, Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, North Macedonia, Portugal, Slovenia, Tunisia, Ukraine
Be able to work in English
Be interested in the topics of the training and have a strong motivation to act as a multiplier
Able to attend for the full duration of the training
If somehow possible and feasible, be committed to come to the training without flying, and to travel instead by overland route.
We explicitly encourage participants of all classes, educational backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and ethnic backgrounds to apply.
ACCOMMODATION and FINANCES:
All costs related to accommodation and food will be covered by the hosting organization.
Travel costs will be reimbursed up to 275 EUR.
Participation fee: NONE!
Sending fee: 500 MKD!