Center for Intercultural Dialogue established a beautiful tradition of organising a school on No Hate Sppech Online every year. For the fourth year, the school gathers around 20 participants with different backgrounds who become multipliers and fighters against hate speech on the internet and outside its boundaries. It happened between 4th and 8th of November in Berovo, Macedonia.
”I am against hate speech” and ”We would like to live in a world without hate” were the taglines of the course, by which the participants lined up. They had the chance to learn about the legal framework of addressing hate speech in Macedonia by understanding what hate speech is, how to identify it and what are the available tools for fighting it.
The sessions were facilitated by Milos Ristovski, Matej Manevski from CID, Tome Sekerdziev from the OSCE Mission to Skopje and Vaska Bojagi. The guests who joined some of the sessions – Zorica Stamenkovska from the Agency of Youth and Sports and Zaneta Popovska – contributed to a greater understanding of the situation in Macedonia regarding the respect of human rights and the actions taken against hate speech.
Conducted in the principles of non-formal education, the training course offered a great variety of interactive activities focused on promoting the understandng of the topic, developing discussions and fostering the team spirit of the participants. After taking photos together and filming short motivational videoclips, they shared their impressions with us regarding their experience as part of the school:
Anita Bekiri:
”During the training course I learned about human rights, about how to react against discrimination, where and how to publish videos or pictures against hate speech. We have learned how to inform the others about their own rights. The people I met, the places I visited and the things I learned created beautiful memories that I will keep in mind all my life.
Jeta Krasniqi:
”I really liked our team work and the positive spirit of all the team members during the entire school activities. Although during the first part we had to cover more deffinitions and legal terminology, it was an interesting input and I enjoyed all the given examples, videos and photos regarding it. As a creative person and a person who hates to learn by heart, this was the best way of connecting the things in my mind.
Aleksandra Mihajlovska:
”It is very important to spread the “no hate” message among everybody especially the youngsters. In times we live in, when the world has lost its fate in humanity, we should be those that will foster love and acceptance. I am glad I was part of the school and I hope the campaign will be much stronger and ongoing because we need it.
