Promoting identity and empowering cultural minorities

Through questionnaires, the project evaluates the level of the stigma the patients feel about themselves and the beneficiaries, before and after. Sosped Foundation (Finland) provides sessions for intense gamers, called Limitless Gaming Program. Based on peer-group support and psychoeducation, these are instructed by a professional paired with an ex-problematic gamer as a volunteer. The aims are to raise awareness of links between excessive gaming and mental well-being.

2. Promoting identity and empowering cultural minorities

We are all part of cultures that have been passed down by the generations before us but navigating in this multitude is something we must learn. Everyone should have the right to learn to recognize cultural phenomena, deal with them in their own way and create new ideas. This requires cultural knowledge, skills, and socio-cultural understanding.

Empowerment is about social acceptance and talking about the problems surrounding young people. The #GenerationsWithAVoice campaign in Portugal is based on intergenerational sharing. Groups of young people discuss their needs (environment, family and housing, education, health, work, economy, community and society, government and politics, and culture). Intergenerational dialogue is promoted, to recognise inequalities and examine their influence on the decision-making process.

All best practices to empower cultural minorities begin with space given for talking.

Turning Tables Denmark is one of the non-profit organisations that work through music and film production to empower socially, economically, and politically marginalised youth by providing them with the means to express their hopes, dreams, and challenges.

Another practice is Refugee Week Greece, organised with the initiative of Athens Comics Library. It is a healing festival, celebrating the contribution, creativity, and authenticity of people who have experienced forced migration, emphasising the ability to start again.

For helping for integration, the A Better Life for Our Youth by Mirsal project works by adapting the Finnish hobby model to fit the needs of immigrant and asylum-seeking youth, achieving similar structural opportunities in trying out leisure activities such as the local young people have. This is a great practice of community building and working together for equality.

The University of Southern California created a Diversity Toolkit, with icebreakers and activities that can provide context, help in building self-awareness, and in respecting the diverse identities of the group. IDEA: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility is a project which helps to define social identities and positions. Age, gender, race, or religion, all influence how you move through the world, dictate how much access you have and the biases you experience. Everything you say, think, and do, is filtered, intentionally or otherwise.

PICTURE NO 1 Sylvia Duckworth on intersectionality.

Language shapes the way of apprehending the world, affects how you think and talk, and your capacity to support yourself and others. Different language speakers connect adjectives to items suggested by their mother tongue. Inclusive Language Guidelines help avoid phrases that perpetuate harm or offence toward members of marginalised communities. The aims are to raise awareness of problems.

Also influencing the way young people see and hear about the world are the media, where we usually have quite a narrow variety of representations (age, gender, cultural backgrounds). One great example for culturally sensitive media education is the Finnish project “From their media to our media”, that produces materials to widen the awareness of different cultures in the media context and on how to create respectful representations in media activities.