Racism

Since 1990, EAPN has been an independent network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and groups involved in the fight against poverty and social exclusion in the Member States of the European Union.

The Open School 21 offers students in and around Hamburg (Germany) a broad program for global education. It aims to raise their awareness of global correlations and realities. At the same time concrete options for action are created for and together with students that enable them to make a self-determined contribution to a sustainable development and more global justice. In the Open School there is the experience that one can make an important contribution to justice, environmental protection, peacekeeping as well as poverty reduction by oneself and that success in these areas is possible.

Open School 21 offers about 40 different workshops, project days, city walks and harbor tours on request. Topics of the Open School are globalization, human rights, poverty reduction, world agricultural trade, climatic change, flight and migration, fair trade, sustainable
consumption, child labor, colonial history as well as living conditions and environments in different countries.

The program of The Open School 21 is directed to school students from every grade and school form. The activities take place at the harbor, in different parts of the city, in the education center “Werkstatt 3” or in one’s own school.

The events are held by self-employed experts with abroad and migration experiences that come from the field of development cooperation, arts and science. For teachers, the Open School 21 offers consultation for global education, support for day-projects as well as materials for preparation and follow-up of events.

In favour of a culture of understanding: What exactly is racism? How did it arise? How does it work? What can I do against it? What is my identity as a person of colour? What is a white identity in the battle against racism? We are searching for and giving answers to these questions. Our members are people of colour, black and white people from various countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

To this end, we are offering individual counselling and training such as

• black consciousness training
• black empowerment training
• anti-racism training
• racism awareness training
• hip hop training
• seminars on intercultural competence

Additionally, our members are working on topics such as black and white identity, models of conflict resolution, development of ways of living based on equal rights in an environment of globalisation as well as interculturality and anti-racism activities.

RAA - regional centers for foreigners' concerns, youth work and schools in the German state of Brandenburg - is a non-profit organization based in Potsdam. We manage six "Regionale Büros für Integration und Toleranz" (BIT) (regional offices for integration and open-mindedness) and four other offices as well as regional and local projects. In 2004, we established "Globales Lernen/Entwicklungszusammenarbeit" (global learning and cooperation for development). For us, global learning is about raising awareness of the world as a whole, of interrelations between North and South, and about relating our everyday life to the lives of people in developing countries. RAA is involved in an enormous variety of development-policy projects. We offer working groups, workshops, and training for teaching staff, and support schools in organizing workshops for students. Long-term projects include supporting school partnerships between schools in Brandenburg and schools in Senegal, Zanzibar/Tanzania and Angola, as well as smaller-scale initiatives. "Begegnungen mit Sansibar" (meeting Zanzibar) is a project that combines education and cooperation for development. Since 1992, more than 160 adolescents and teachers have been given the chance to gain deep insights into another culture and to help promote interactions between Germany and Tanzania, and more will follow. The project in Zanzibar encourages participants to closely examine both the foreign culture and their own. It includes such diverse activities as the building of classrooms, theater projects, thematic research, workshops, seminars and continuous education for teachers. In Germany, the results of this work are available as educational materials, thus enabling our partners from Tanzania to present their life and their views in Brandenburg. In addition, RAA is in charge of organizing and holding the "Brandenburger entwicklungspolitische Bildungs- und Informationstage" (Brandenburg educational and informational days on development aid) as well as the education program of the 'Berlin Import Shop' fair.

ReachOut is an advisory centre for victims of right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic attacks. The organisation offers, among other things, advice on legal possibilities, consultation regarding financial support, psychosocial counselling, and accompanied visits to authorities’ offices, doctors, lawyers and the court. Furthermore, the project offers various educational programmes for disseminators in the area of adult and youth education. The aim is to sensitise the public for the dimension and the consequences of racism and right-wing extremism as well as to achieve solidarity with the victims.

The Heinrich Böll's institute Schleswig - Holstein offers services for the political education, mainly in the most northern federal state. We consider us as an independent part of the worldwide green movement. Our events and other educational projects are aimed to further clarify "green" discussions and proposals and to spread them through society. We want to stimulate democratic processes and enable people to become active independently and to take part in forming society and politics.

Here, we relate to subjects, discussions and questions which are of particular importance for the "green project" and its programmatic advancement. We love the dispute and the common research of new knowledge and answers. Our events are places of the political discussion, considered as the serious and heated dispute about important present and future subjects. The authentic representation of different positions, the dialogue between people from different social spectra and the "learning of each other" are characteristics for our events and projects.