Microaggressions KA1 Training

-- Note that only registered organisations (NGOs, public bodies and social enterprises) are eligible for this "Mobility of Youth Workers" project --

In our present-day society, discrimination of marginalised groups has partially shifted from being overt to having a more subtle and everyday character. In particular, microaggressions have been receiving more attention by governments, NGOs and businesses. But microaggressions are often hard to tackle, as identifying and assessing them is more difficult than it is for more overt forms of discrimination.

As youth work organisations who are committed to ending discrimination against vulnerable groups, we wish to support young people in disarming the microaggressions they experience in everyday life. But we are struggling to do that in our activities, oftentimes being limited to e.g. defining the concepts or proposing nonviolent communication techniques to our participants to resolve microaggressions. Our struggle involves:
* not always recognizing that a microaggression is being done.
* not always being able to address the inner conflicts and emotional challenges that arise within us when dealing with microaggressions and broader acts of discrimination, including struggling to confront and integrate our own biases and shadow aspects.
* not always being empathetic to the victims of microaggressions and not always having the resilience and courage required to effectively stand against injustice and support people that face discrimination.
* not knowing how to intervene whenever we experience microaggressions, and not knowing which strategies and tactics are effective in disarming microaggressions.
* not having practised (enough) with such strategies and tactics in our own lives and experiences.
lacking insights in how to discuss and simulate such strategies and tactics as part of our activities for youth, and not having (enough) practical experience in facilitating these discussions and simulations.

In order to be able to support young people in disarming microaggressions, we need to educate and train a pool of youth workers in our organisations to become proficient in recognizing, processing and addressing microaggressions, as well as in passing the associated competences on to the youth they work with.

The objectives of this project, therefore, are to help youth workers, specifically trainers and coaches:
1. learn to better recognize and process microaggressions that they come across in their daily and professional lives and to become more aware of their own mechanisms for coping with microaggressions.
2. develop their capability to disarm such microaggressions by applying microintervention strategies in the practical situations they experience.
3. learn to set up and implement workshops or similar activities through which they pass on these competences to youth who are targeted by microaggressions or who are / wish to be an ally to such victims. With the idea that by participating in such activities, those youth themselves learn how to (recognize and) disarm microaggressions.