Workshop on gender issues for educators working in shelters with unaccompanied minors.

Working with the living democracy website is a journey full of wonders and surprises – full of new paths to explore and treasures to hunt. Literally being in a ‘living’ democracy, we find ourselves in a fluid world with new challenges, evolving needs and a constant push away from our comfort zone. A situation that requires the right attitudes, values, knowledge and skills to cope efficiently with an ever-changing reality. During the last few years, migration trends and increased refugee influx have brought adaptation and integration into the spotlight – both for migrants and refugees, as well as the native population in host countries. For newcomers, cultural and civic orientation both contribute towards an understanding of the social and cultural norms of the receiving society and living democracy lesson plans provide a valuable tool to achieve this.

One indicative example was a two-hour workshop on gender issues given to educators working in shelters with unaccompanied minors in Greece in May.  According to Young Journalists, a group of teenage and young refugees, migrants and Greeks that produce the newspaper “Migratory Birds”, gender equality is one of the “things we don’t talk about”. In her article https://migratorybirds.gr/things-we-don-t-talk-about/, young Morteza writes that “Every culture is peppered with unwritten rules. But in my country, Afghanistan, everything works differently. For example, feminism doesn’t exist. A woman has no right to question a man! If a man tries to support women’s rights, society starts to question his gender and labels him homosexual. Because of this narrow-minded society, a lot of Afghans left the country and passed through the gates of Europe for a better life. They’ve changed country, but what about their thoughts and minds? Are they still the same? YES! Because they grew up in communities where boys are taught that women belong in the kitchen. I think it is time to tell them that this is Europe. Here, we all have the right to believe in what we want to believe, to keep our religion or change it if we want, to enjoy gender equality”.

With the help of https://www.living-democracy.com/textbooks/volume-3/part-1/unit-2/lesson-3/, we discussed equality between men and women, explored gender-related discrimination in society and invited participants to change individual and collective practices in their work with unaccompanied minors, the majority of whom are adolescent boys. Using the first story from Student handout 2.2, we transferred the incident from the family kitchen to the shelter and concluded by paraphrasing the father’s words as “it is good to have some practice, that it is a good preparation for becoming a democratic citizen, self-sufficient and competent to live independently”.