After the end of the Study Session in Budapest, we asked some participants to deliver their feeling about the past week. Ioanna (EKNE Greece) and Chiara (FUCI Italy) accepted to give us their impressions.

“The ” ’Digital Natives’ advocating for Human Rights” Study Session 2015, took place from the 22nd February to the 1st March in the European Youth Centre in Budapest. The session was attended by 37 participants (including the preparation team) from Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Malta, Greece, Armenia, Nairobi (Africa) and Jakarta (Indonesia), who shared their ideas, experiences and knowledge based on their culture.

All the participants worked hard being focused on human right issues as discrimination, equality, freedom, free speech, right to education, right to health etc. The main methodology of that Study Session was the one of See-Judge-Act. After long discussions, presentations and role-plays, the participants moved on the use of social media and internet (creation of websites and online magazines) for the better information of people not only all over their countries but globe in general. So, two days before the end of Study Session, the participants separated into smaller groups and prepared videos, challenges, photos, magazines etc in order to pass the message of everyone’s right to equal confrontation.

Of course, parts of JECI-MIEC’s Study Session were both Spiritual development, with morning and lunch prayer, Opening and Closing Mass, and Intercultural evenings, with presentations of each member’s country, culture and traditional products.

Thanks to every member of the preparatory team and every single participant’s contribution, the activity managed to be completed properly. We all owe a huge “Thank you” especially to the people of the European Youth Centre, who were of any possible help every time it was needed, during our stay in Youth Centre, the experts, who dedicated their free time to give us a beautiful lection and last but not least the European Youth Foundation!”

Ioanna Vidali (EKNE Greece)

“From the windows of the lobby of the European Youth Center the sun peeps through the dense fog of Budapest, it is fiery red almost wanting to burn. I can always picture the sun how it was the door lock of the sky through which God looks at us!

Here everything is quiet at 7:15 am! It is silence except for some small noise that comes from the cleaning staff! Silence eliminates the flooding of the words and the overflowing of something that must be said, preparing for a day that is to begin, I am expecting my fellows of international adventure with which, for the entire stay at the Study Session held in the Hungarian capital (February 22-March 1st), I ran every morning at dawn from our accommodation to reach a church where to attend mass. An Italian, a Polish, two Romanians, two Maltese who go to Mass in Hungarian may seem like the beginning of a joke, but it was the only way in which a special friendship between the rows of JECI-MIEC was formed, that is much more than an international association: is the meeting of young people with suitcases targeting Europe from every nation on the continent, willing to live together for a week’s study session! It ‘hard to describe in words this experience (there are things that must be tasted to be understood, such as chocolate) because inside there is much more! It’s about getting pleasantly lost in the lives of others. Immersed in English accent accommodated the source language of each, the theme of study focused on Human Rights and Media. We have endeavored to undertake group work creating concrete projects for the protection of human rights through the new media. Human rights are something that often is known only in theory and is printed on the glossy page of a subsidiary of Civic Education as almost not wanting to meddle with our ordinary, real and personal life. We are individual people but not anonymous. Anonymity makes people run from the responsibility of the piece of the world entrusted to the hands of everyone. The fight is difficult because of some digital platforms that are sweeping the tradition today not facilitating the task of education to transparency: there the anonymity acts as a master. In order to raise awareness of human rights will therefore be necessary to demolish this anonymity and start again from the particular, from the very detail of the relationships: between me and myself, between me and you that is sitting next to me, between you, me and the others. Knowing each other helps getting empathically in the shoes of the other, to respect them, to understand and accept them – to recognize their right of humanity that they deserve.”

Chiara Capponi – FUCI Italy

Original source: http://www.fuci.net/index.php/news/11-news/1551-digital-natives-advocating-for-human-rights-conclusa-la-study-session-di-jeci-miec