Let’s drink black-and-white, discrimination -free, multi-cultural coffee!

Grosu Luciana
(Age 18, Romania)

Tolerance and diversity can be achieved only by togetherness. In every neighborhood,a” inter-cultural café” should be created. Here youth of different nationalities should be encouraged to promote their country’s traditions and culture by music concerts, art-expositions, dance and theatre. These events can be organized at least once a month. The spectacles would be free and every young person, regardless the race, should be allowed to get involved or simply attend.

The “inter-cultural café” should also organize writing, painting, singing, graffiti and sport contests every week-end. The contests may have a certain theme inspired by one country’s cultureor a general message like “peace”,” communication”,” tolerance”. There will be no individual participants, but only teams. Youth with different cultural backgrounds will thus learn to collaborate and understand each other better. The contests will offer real prizes, if not money, subscriptions to gym-clubs, free access to internet or tickets to concerts and cinema.

These centers should also offer classes for the students who find school difficult. The classes should be free for all those who accept to form a “study-group” with a member of another nationality. Also, youth could become teachers themselves and teach their national language. Allowing youth to learn from other youth would represent a new and original idea and could attract many people. Students should have then the opportunity to give a real language-exam and obtain a certificate.

The “inter-cultural” café should also offer free video/audio counseling for youth.Every person will have access to a personal account on a computer. Alone, in a special room, youth will speak about their problems in front of a camera. The counselor’s response will be videotaped, too, and sent to their personal account the next day. However, youth won’t be able to view the video, unless they will accept first to respond to another help message sent by other teen. The computer program will “match “youth of different ethnicities, thus determining them to communicate and help each other. However, all the video messages should be checked by a specialist and youth who use bad language or give inappropriate replies should lose their right to free counseling. It is known that youth often find it hard to speak in front of an adult counselor. At the same time, many of them also dislike writing because they don’t know the language very well or because they are too nervous to find the right words. If they chose between video or only audio messages (for anonymity) youth would speak freely and also learn to respect each other.

Many youth search for a job. The “inter-cultural’ café should offer a list of jobs opportunities for young people and also give recommendations for those who want to be hired. These “recommendations “should be taken into account by all companies as a guarantee the young person is serious, reliable and honest. In order to obtain the right to a recommendation, a young person should first volunteer three months in a project against racial discrimination or participate in a teaching-learning program.

Every project against racial discrimination started by youth with the help of an adult mentor should have three steps: “raising-awareness campaign”, “new solution –idea” and the “communication and interaction” concrete part. The raising-awareness campaign will give youth the chance to design posters and create slogans in order to support the cause they chose to fight for. They should be free to choose the public places where they will prefer to talk (schools, malls, clubs, etc) and they should also be allowed to speak on radio and/or TV. The publicity may attract a lot of young people as it is known that they associate the idea of mass-media apparitions with that of success and wealth. The second part implies that the youth group comes with an original proposal for combating racism and discrimination. This idea can be that of a national/international project for youth, a suggestion for a change in the educational system, a demand for a new law to be passed, etc. Youth` ideas would be published, and the authorities should consider putting them in practice. Young people have a lot of ideas but because they feel nobody listens to them, they don’t express their opinions. The “inter-cultural” café should prove youth they can determine real changes. The last part of the project will give youth the power to decide what kind of event they would like to organize in order to raise attention upon the need to end violence and discrimination. This event can be a festival, a protest meeting, a debate, etc., but it should involve as many young people as possible and it should determine them start a dialogue.

The “inter-cultural” cafes may also organize discussions and invite youth of different races to participate. The debates should be moderated by a young communication-specialist, but they should be informal and easy-to-follow even for a young person who doesn’t know the language very well. Basically, youth will be asked a set of questions and then allowed to talk freely. In order to attract youth, the moderators will have to state that this is “the right place for telling exactly what you think”. However, the moderator will have to put as many questions as needed in order to find out the real reasons of youth` anger, hate, frustration or pain. These debates could help the authorities and the NGOs understand better the problems that affect youth and prepare new strategies.

Finally, every “inter-cultural” café should help victims of discrimination by appealing the institutions or authorities that can solve the young person’s problems. For example, schools will become responsible for students that say they have been bullied; the city’s police should intervene in the case of youth being victims of street violence; hospitals, enterprises or even public places like restaurants or discos should take measures in order to end discrimination.

After debates, coffee and soft drinks should be offered.