A Positive Messengers creative tool in collaboration with Hope Not Hate

Read the Difficult Conversations Creative Tool HERE.

These teaching materials have been created for use in schools, both primary and secondary.  They set out to explain the nature of  hate speech, to dispel myths about immigrants and to help users to combat hatred and to develop a counter narrative.

Download your copy here.

Choose one of 20 simple actions from the British Council’s Be A Positive Messenger Challenge and share your action online. How many of the 20 can you do and share?

Perfect for schools, young people, teachers, individuals, community groups… everyone is welcome to take part in this ‘homework challenge’!

Simply download the British Council’s PDF (every download helps this campaign) and choose your actions. 

Goldsmiths’ 2018 PGCE cohort produced an set of excellent classroom resources on the topic of migration which have been piloted in partner schools in London, covering levels from KS2 to KS5.

Click here to download your copy.

The Creative Tool Positive Messengers License, developed in cooperation with artists, performers, communication and creative specialists, aimed at introducing a thinking-out-of-the-box approach, to deconstruct hate speech and negative representation of migrants and refugees in an alternative way.

1. ST LINE: ONE NOUN 
2. ND LINE: TWO ADJECTIVES 
3. RD LINE: THREE VERBS: 
4. TH LINE: FOUR WORDS – ONE SENTENCE 
5. TH LINE: ONE NOUN: WORD WHICH REFLECTS THE BASE OF THE PROBLEM 
Example: 
Regugees, Hopeless, Cold, Escape, Hope, Don´t smile, They, Want, Safe, Place, Solidarity.

This crossword is a fun way to verify if you understand Human rights basic concepts. If you can solve it, thanyou know the basic ingredients of diversity.

With the “These 5 innovations changed the world as we know it. Do you know where they come from?” quiz we try to inform online users about the life of immigrants who are running away from conflict. We also try to put ourselves and others in somebody else’s shoes by showing that great innovations come from all corners of the world, regardless of nationality, skin colour, language or culture.

Every question of the “Check your knowledge in Geography with these 7 questions!” quiz comes with an interesting and often worrying fact about the millions of people on our planet that are immigrants and refugees. Users can learn about what Tibet and the more than 14 million refugees and immigrants have in common or what does Antarctica have to do with refugees.

The “Are you a foodie?” quiz aims at informing online users about different facts regarding immigrant and refugees in a fun way that includes one of our favorite subjects – food. You can find out if you know the main ingredients in dishes from all corners of the planet and learn a little bit about people who come to our country, city or neighborhood with their own culinary traditions.

One person is asking folowing questions: 
• Do you think I prefer to spent my holidays in the mountains / by the sea? 
• In the party do I prefer beer/vine/shots? 
• In the restaurant do I order big tasty steak or veggie salad? 
• Do I have a dog? 
• Do I have a driving licence? 
• ACTIVITY: What do you thing about me? 
• Have I ever been in Africa? 
• Do I prefer summer/winter sports? 
• Am I punctual/tidy/strict? 
• After that we talk about the selection criteria we use. Each participant reveals the stereotypes concealed in his/her decision making. We try to name these stereotypes and we look for their sources and the reasons why they originated. 
Students wrote down positive messages against stereotypes.

Leona, the lector of the activity, distributed to the participants few different racist/ xenophobic / islamophobic articules - mostly hoax online articles. 
See: Creative Workshop presentation. Participants red the articles and the on-line hate speech debate under the articles. 
Their task was to creatively react to the online hate speech. Write down some funny/controversal/ironical claims…

Objective: To discuss prejudices, stereotypes, values, and the limits of tolerance 
Time limit: 60 min 
Description: The group leader distributes a copy of the scenario to the participants, reads the instructions, and allows each participant to independently select three passengers with whom he/she would like to travel, and three passengers he/she would definitely not choose. The results can be evaluated either in groups of three to six, or by the entire class. The participants must always specify the criteria they used to make their decisions.

Instead of borrowing a book, participants “borrowed” a person who is volunteering. They had possibility to speak with 3 of them:

* Eva regularly volunteers in refugee camps in Greece. She was also in refugee camps in Serbian-Hungarian borde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5P0UAVzFY 
* Dorotka: she helps Roma kids to catch up on their studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ytte05b7w    
* Alex: volunteers in Cesta domů, organization which provides care to the dying and their loved ones. Alex besides other things helps to people dying in their home environment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn39rtLRLM4 

3 volunteers stories which should inspire people, especially young people to make the world better.

There is no room for hate speech on the Internet, and we need your help to make sure of it. Being careful about what kind of expressions you use you can support the thousands of people affected by online hate speech, and you can act to make the internet a more welcoming and more favorable environment for all. This game promotes the use of positive expressions to replace those that incite hatred.

The player's task is to make balloons with positive messages explode with the help of the positive messenger bird. For each positive message balloon, points will be awarded as a reward. If by mistake balloons with hate-inducing messages explode, points will be subtracted from the already obtained score. You can find the game on GoogleApps, called Positive Messengers, the Balloon Games section.

In this activity, through raising awareness actions, was involved a local school (30 classes) and numerous teachers and the main actors were 60 students from the school  that under the supervision of a local artist, have created a 12x2 meters painting that was affixed to a billboard in the centre of Perugia together with explanations on the project and the activity itself. Furthermore, pictures of the original painting were transformed into 90 informative posters 70x100 cm and affixed among Perugia and Assisi for 15 days. The billboards were aimed at both the dissemination of the creative tool and the dissemination of the project and its objectives and activities.

In this video of about 11 minutes, professionals from social structures and health structures from municipalities in Attica, representatives of NGOs and migrant organizations express opinions, questions, thoughts and feelings about online hate speech.

We intend to make a popular ball pit (like those found in amusement parks) but in much smaller size - only two persons would be able to sit in it. That pool would be located in a busy pedestrian area with many passers-by. One immigrant would sit on a chair in a pit. The other chair would be empty and it would serve as an invitation to passers-by to interact: HAVE A SEAT - TAKE A BALL - ASK A QUESTION.

This creative tool is quite simple and serves as an icebreaker intended not only to “break the ice” but also to eliminate the fear of the unknown and any prejudice that people may have. A group of participants is divided in two equal smaller groups - a group sitting down and a group drawing.

The aim is to raise awareness of the difficult and strenuous journey of refugees by means of a photography exhibition of the famous National Geographic photographer Ciril Jazbec (SLO), who took photographs of hundreds of refugees crossing the border between Serbia and Croatia. 

The experts from the Greek partner organization on the “Coalition of Positive Messengers to Counter Online Hate Speech” project have created a training session that includes a number of activities aiming at creating a discussion about online hate speech between the participants. Different activities and exercises aimed at different objectives – for the participants to get to know each other, for them to react to different situations of hate speech, for them to try and build a positive message to counter hate speech and others.

“Interactive Image”: During the numerous actions and dissemination activities within the “Positive Messengers” project in schools and public events, FORMA.Azione has collected a huge number of positive messages aimed at contrasting hate speech. All these messages are now scanned and in order to disseminate them we have created this interactive image online. The last consist of a static image representing the logo of the project and some further information. Once the visitor opens the image and scrolls on it with the mouse, appear some points. Each point represents a positive message. Furthermore, 3 main bottoms are situated on the picture and trough these bottoms the visitor can decide to visit the official web site, to leave a positive message on the official website or to watch the 3 informative videos produced by SDA.

The experts from the Municipality of Agii Anargiri-Kamatero managed to create a dramatization activity in which there is a public situation in which an Albanian migrant faces hate speech on the streets of Athens. The participants had the chance to get involved in the dramatizations as actors. All of the people involved in this process were able to see the particular situation from different angles and experience hate speech up close.

The feedback activities from the training sessions organized by the Municipality of Agii Anargiri-Kamatero involved the sharing of thoughts, emotions and views on the trainings which helped in gaining some clarity on the subject of hate speech and how to counteract it.

ABUZ DE AUTORITATE – încălcarea legalităţii de către cei care deţin puterea în scopul obţinerii unor avantaje personale sau de grup (violare de domiciliu, negarea justiţiei, violenţele funcţionarilor, etc.).

ANARHIE – dezordine, absenţă a regulilor

CENZURĂ – îngrădirea libertăţilor de exprimare

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