STAND TOGETHER

FOR TOLERANCE
training course
from the 16th to the 26th of June 2015
MONTBRUN-BOCAGE France

TECHNICAL BOOKLET

association

with the support of:

www.solafrika.com

STATEMENT
OF INTENT

Stand
Together
Tolerance

for

The main goal of this TC is to improve the

inclusion of marginalized people in our
European societies. We wish to increase
the
citizen
fight
against
the
discrimination.
During this TC, we met different
organizations fighting in their everyday
life to include, accept and empower
marginalized
people
and
created
workshops together in order to get to
know certain minority groups.
We met with people suffering from
discrimination and created workshops to
show the participants these situations.

Montbrun-Bocage
France

THE
ACTIVITIES

The activities consisted of discussions

and workshops on topics and practice of
theater of the oppressed.
The theater of the oppressed gave the
frame of the week, the first and last day
we were working on the scenes.
The week went on as the following:
- workshop on the topic of prison and
meeting with an association working with
prisoners,
- role game on the topic of migration,
- meeting with the roma community in
the form of Living Library,
- practice of adapted sports with an
organisation working in the field,
- workshop on gender issues .

CRASHING STEREOTYPES AND

GAINING INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

"the mere fact of having people from

different countries was a workshop itself
These workshops allowed the participants to
become aware of their own stereotypes and
prejudices, and to work on them, getting fresh
point of views from the trainers and from each
other. The international aspect was extremely
important in this training, as stereotypes are
partly based on cultural patterns, the mere fact
of having people from different countries was a
workshop itself.
We organized intercultural evenings where the participants had the chance to share their
traditions and their countries' situation on discrimination with the others, thus providing
the group with a large international background on the topic.
All of those workshops allowed the creation of group dynamics and developed cooperation
between the participants.

THE TECHNICAL
BOOKLET

The technical booklet that you have in your hand

was entirely written and built by the participants
of this TC, with special design of our participant
Ondej and some help of SolAfrika team.
Every workshop is described in this booklet.
One or two supervisor was chosen for each
activity, and was responsible for the writing and
the pictures for the technical booklet.
This booklet was sent to every participant to use
as a tool to reproduce and improve the
workshops and the knowledge acquired in the
development of their projects in the youth field.

for more info please visit:

http://www.solafrika.com

created by the participants of the

training course and SolAfrika team, with
special design of our participant Ondej

FORUM THEATER
theater of the opressed

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The Theater of the Oppressed was created by Augusto Boal in the 60s, first in Brazil and
later in Europe. It is an interactive form of theater where the audience can change elements
of the plays, such as the script, the scene... Spectators can come onto the stage to play the
role of one character in order to change the outcome of the scene. The goal of this type of
theater is to promote social and political change. The audience is regarded as spect-actor
as it gets the opportunity to analyse, express opinions and views, and transform the
reality.
The topics explored during our training
course were discrimination, stereotypes,
gender, education, professional carrier,
language barriers, domestic violence... We
were 24 participants, later separated into 4
working groups.
Everything that can describe our characters
and stories can be used as tools to improve
the scenes and make them clear to the
audience. We have to rely on our inventivity
and creativity to express the social problems
that we choose.
We started with some exercices of general theater to warm up and make you feel more
confident about being on stage and interact with the other participants.
After that, we did some basic exercises that introduce you to the forum-theater. Later we
created our own scenes in small group in order to develop a final representation.

The Chair Game

(The Great Game of Power)

In this exercice we used five chairs and one table

to simulate situations of power and oppression.
The audience was then invited to modify the
scene in order to give one element the greatest
amount of power in relation to the other ones,
show the most oppressed elements, and finally to
achieve equality.

The Sculptural Game

Picture Location Game

We were paired, one person had the liberty to create a statue of an oppressor, and then
put himself in the position of the oppressed. Then we would switch the stances so we could
feel the two roles.

(Family Pictures)

We chose a few locations

where we thought could occur
situations of oppression such
as: street, school, work place,
public
transport,
foreign
country, etc. We created
improvised pictures by going
one by one on stage in order
to add some elements.

Killing Game

(The Screen Image)

We were told to choose 4 volunteers to act as

oppressors. They had to choose a specific way of
walking from one side to the other of the stage in
row, and to add a particular sound, that they
repeated all the time. Another character was
supposed to do some random dancing and
singing between them.
The oppressors were to cross the
stage three times. First, without
noticing
the
singing
character.
Second, trying to beat her only one
time, and he/she could continue singing
and dancing. And lastly, the oppressors
beat her/him until she/he was not able to
stand anymore.
The public could interact and propose ideas to solve
the oppression situation.

All games come from the

book
Games for actors and
non-actors
by Augusto Boal

Creating our scene

Some of us choose topics and locations that might be interesting to work on, and we were
free to join the group we prefered. We separated in four groups.

step

Create the scene

The person who decided the topic in each group had to create one main picture using the
people who volunteered to participate before explaining them the general idea. The
participant had to debate and after they could discover the real meaning.
This picture became the central one and we had to imagine the scene 15 seconds before
and after, therefore creating a general idea of the scene with those three pictures.
At the end of the day we presented these first steps to the whole group in order to receive
feedback.
The next day, we took the feedback into consideration, made some changes in our scenes
to make them more clear, and add some dialogues. We did a lot of rehearsals to improve
our scenes.

step

Presentation

For the final presentation, we had four scenes about general topic of tolerance :
- Language barrier in an international company
- Domestic violence and consequances at school
- Discrimination of Roma Community in a foreign country
- Sexual harrasment in the street
We played each scene several times. Firstly without any interruption, then with changes
according to the solutions proposed by the audience. We discussed each proposal.

PRISON
we talked about the topic of prison
with two workshops

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Art Workshop on Stereotypes about Prison

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Tool: Discussion, photos, brainstorming,

paintings
Material: photos, paper, paint, handcraft
materials like pencils, egg cartons, etc.
Goal: to express our thoughts about the
prison life and to exchange ideas and to
clarify the differences between fact,
interpretation and evaluation in everyday
life.

Than we got different photos on the topic

of prison. We were divided into groups,
where we analyzed the photos and tried
to guess what the situation on the
picture was.
In the smaller groups we came up with
key words and categorized them into
three
groups:
facts,
interpretation,
evaluation.

Firstly we made paintings, everyone had

to depict/create art about how they see
prison using different materials. We had
to compare them and find similarities.

These categories refer to what we see in

the case of facts; what we think it can be
in the case of interpretation, showing us
our stereotypes; what we feel about
what we think and see as evaluation,
showing us our prejudices.

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Storytelling & Trial Simulation

Tool: story telling, trial simulation

Material: points of views,
practical examples

experiences,

Goals: raising awareness and increasing

curiosity about prison, explaining and
understanding how the system works,
comparing
different
countries
and
cultures regarding this topic, increase
tolerance towards prisoners and guards,
understanding the viewpoints of the
family of (ex-) prisoners

This workshop started with storytelling.

Firstly Bastien from association GENEPI
described his experience as a volunteer
in the prison, he works with long term
prisoners and does workshops with
them. He and his co-volunteer friends
visit them once a week on educational
purposes, inform them about what is
happening outside, show them films and
have discussion, they also conduct
theoretical research how prisoners live.

The goal was to expand knowledge

about prison life from different sides.
Some of the participants also had stories
to share, so it was their turn.
Aule described her fathers life in prison.
Mari described her work as a guard in
Tallinn prison. The goal was to create live
discussion and most importantly to
expand knowledge about prison life from
different sides.

Simulation of trial: Bastien gave us some examples of crimes, we were

divided into groups and we had to decide what the punishment/sentence should
be. We also compared our thoughts about the sentence and had a discussion.
This tool helped us to create empathy towards the prisoners.

Evaluation

This day helped us to create empathy

towards prisoners and understand the
different points of view on this topic.
Bastien gave us information about what
the conditions are that the prisoners are
forced to live in, regardless of their level
of crime. We used different tools to
understand prison life and all tools
supported each other. Some people,
including the ones, who put this booklet
together thought that this day was
probably
one
of
the
most
outstanding one in terms of the number
of tools we used.

Ways of adaptation

Looking for ways how to apply the newly

acquired information to our own lives,
participating in voluntary work in our
own region; trying to help someone,
even if it is just one person.

Comments & reactions

The process of the painting/handcraft of prison life had no discussion about what each
person wanted to depict in their piece of art. The sum up part of this tool was missing.
Storytelling from someone who actually works in prison or who is somehow connected to
this topic is very good and adds very realistic value to the discussion, it draws our attention
to this topic even more.
It would have been great to have the common language with Bastien, either French or
English. It is always difficult to share personal experiences and we think that these people
are brave and thank them for sharing.
On one hand, the simulation of trial opened peoples eyes about the fact that real life stories
are not that black and white. On the other hand, the simulation game was confusing because
we needed more details before we decide what the sentence should be. Some said this game
was too long. Some also said that it was confusing because some of us were thinking about
the law and some were deciding based on the gut feeling considering the humane point of
view, they did not know which aspect to use to make a decision about the sentence. The
cultural differencess stood out when we discussed about the different crimes, so its fair to
say that the perception about the severity of a crime varies depending on the cultural
backround.
Discussion about the photos from prisons it was easy to find the Facts, but it was difficult
to categorize the words in the other two categories - Evaluation and Interpretation. We think
it might be because we often mix them up in real life and thats why we had to put a lot more
thought into what is what. In reality these two concepts have different meanings and we
really had to focus a lot to get to the bottom of the meaning of each word and how to
categorize them.

About the general discussion during the training course there are two kinds of people:
those who take part and those who do not participate in the discussion. Mostly the people
who felt open shared their thoughts, although sometimes it was a little bit hard, and the
people who are more closed did not say much. This is the natural way that life is and that is
not necessarily bad.
participants of the TC

Other tools on this topic

Living librabry with ex-prisoners.

We imagine this would be quite difficult to
conduct,
but
it
would
also
very
interesting to see the point of view of an
ex-prisoner. Simulation of prison using
the following roles: the teacher, the
priest, the person who helps make phone
calls (telefonist), the psychologist, the
prisoner, the guard, the senior guard, the
hr department, cooks and helpers,
volunteers,
etc...
there
are
many
positions in prison that you can take.

Bastiens quote

In todays democratic world it is

everyones duty to do their best to
build a better society. The prisoners
are excluded from the society and
nobody actually cares about them.
Sometimes it is not the prisoners fault
that they are in prison, we dont know
their stories so we should not judge.
They are humans and they have their
rights.
Bastien from GENEPI

Final comment from participants

We think that putting this booklet together was another wonderful experience, sharing ideas
and putting a booklet together helped very nicely to summarize this topic, which tools were
used, how participants felt about this topic and what new approaches could be discovered in
terms of tools.
THANK YOU!

MIGRANTS' JOURNEY
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Tool: role game

Goal: to discover the migration process

by experiencing it from different point of
views, understand the system of arriving
to a foreign country to settle down
Preparation: a lot depending on your
knowledge on the topic (1-2 weeks)
Timing: 3 hours, appr. 1,5 for the game,
the rest for the briefing

(according to the migration

process in France)

Bedroom
Hand-out of
passports

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The aim of the game

Material: role cards, passports, visa

cards, signs for the different areas of the
migrants' journey, string, dice, paper,
etc.

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The best way to experience a process is

to go through it this is the motivation
to put the participants into the
situation of migrants.
In this role game the participants get
only one objective : cross the border of
France and make their bests to get the
papers needed to stay.
In order to do so, they have all the
instructions needed on the role card,
the area of the game is already set up
by the time they arrive there.

An example of how to organize the

area, mentioning the roles needed
for the spots.

Asylum Seeker
Center
Prefecture

1 officer

2 officers

1 policeman

Humanitarian Organization

trainers

2 volunteers

Border area
1 policeman + 1 custom officer

VISA
Consulate

1 VISA
officer

Breakfast

Retention
center

1 guard

1 smuggler

The Roles
In order to have a global view on the migration process, we decided that the participants will
play the role of officers, smugglers, policemen, everyone who is involved in the journey .
We examined the migration process in
France and defined the functioners
involved in it, creating the following
roles. We advise to give these cards
to the participants in advance min.
30min, as these roles are a bit more
complicated and it is chaotic to give
all the role cards to the people at the
same time.

VISA officer
Prefecture Officer
Retention Center Officer
Custom Officer
Policemen & Policewomen
Asylum Seeker Center Officer
Volunteers for a Solidarity
Organization helping migrants
- Smuggler

BE AS REALISTIC AS POSSIBLE!

The rest of the group will turn into

migrants, trying to enter France from
different countries. We decided to handle
them these roles directly after waking up,
without letting them know their roles or
the process of the role game beforehand.
The aim is to define as many different
backgrounds as possible to complete
the game. Here are our examples:

A student from China

A teenager from Congo
A father of 4 from Mali
A roma family from Romania
An Estonian family

How the game goes

Once the area is set up, everybody got his/her role card, everybody is at his/her starting
point... here we go !
The officers stay at their place, the policemen, volunteers, etc. circulate, the migrants are
following the process according to their role cards...
The game continues until each migrant has done the process the furthermost possible of
course not everybody will finish with a resident permit for 10 years in France.

Role of the trainers

The
trainers
should
observe
the
participants all along the game, in order to
have enough input for the evaluation!
Staying outside of the role game is very
important to keep your objectivity.
Trainers can guide participants if they are
lost in their role, they can help by giving
ideas, helping them staying in their roles.

Embassy desk
to ask for VISA

This role game is a version of the board

game
Parcours
de
migrants
created by the French association
La Cimade fighting for the rights of
migrants; we changed and adapted it to
our TC.
You find the description of the game and
the tools needed here in French:
http://www.lacimade.org/agir/agir
/rubriques/258-sensibiliser

Remarks of participants:

In conclusion people was excited,

confused, lost, insight into the real
problems, depressed, special. It
was nice to be in different
situation, this type of problems
show how important it is to
understand migrants.

Evaluation
CALMING DOWN

PUTTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER...

Just after the game we advise 5 minutes

of group meditation to leave behind the
role. Before starting the evaluation, let's
give them half an hour to calm down and
get back to reality from the 'reality' of
their roles.

Until then the participants were in their

role but didn't see the game as a whole,
now it is time to give context to their
experience. We gather the whole group
and read out loud the role of each
person. Than we split into small groups
to start the evaluation...

Discussion

1
2
3
4

Feelings

Ask the participants to tell their feelings without

explaining them too much. I felt

Do you think in real life a migrant/volunteer/officer/police/etc. can have the

same feelings as you during the role game?

Definitions

In order to be able to discuss about migration,

some definitons are needed to be clarified.

Choose the definitons you think are important to understand the topic (and the
process in your country maybe).
Refugee
Undocumented
We chose the followings :
Human migration
Asylum seeker

The game
itself

Migrant

Interpretation of the game! This is the moment

when the participants can elaborate their feelings.

What do you think of the game in general?

What happened according to the perspectives of different people?

Link with
reality

Links with the real life situations. Discussion

about differences and similarities.

Do the roles seem realistic?

The situations which came up, the reactions of the others do they seem realistic?
What are the reasons of migration in the game / in reality?
Not enough jobs, political fear, war, hope of better education, poor medical
care, etc...
What are the obstacles of migration in the game / in reality?
What are the obstacles once you are there?
discrimination, language, administration, culture, religion, economical
hardships, etc...
What about the freedom of mouvement, in your country, in Europe, in the world?
What about solutions?

No

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Roma Living Library

Topic: Roma people in the society

Goals: to raise awareness of the life of Roma
people, to give a possibility to the participants
to understand the traditions and principals of
Roma community from the first hands, to
break stereotypes which exist about Roma
people.
Material: story-tellers, people with the
personal experience (representatives of Roma
community, volunteers who work with Roma),
cards with the title of the living book, a
poster with all titles.

The invited guests are selected based on their experience on the topic of the
workshop. The invited guests are considered as living books . It is good to
have as many guests as possible who know the topic very well and from
different perspectives. It can be a volunteer who works with Roma people or
Roma people who are active in promoting their traditions in the society.

Living Library
Bibliothque Vivante de Toulouse

The topics the guest talked about are the following:

-

A business woman in Roma society

Family and education of Roma
Why do I help Roma people?
Friendship of Roma and non-Roma people

The guests are located individually in the big room in different corners. The participants are
divided into small groups of 3-4 people. In the middle of the room there is a reception desk
where all topics are written on the poster to be visible to everyone.
There are also small cards with the title of a book where participants register the time
they start and finish to talk with the invited guest.
Each group talks with a guest during 20-30 minutes of the selected topic, then groups move
to other guest. If there are 6 invited guests and 25 participants it will be difficult to speak
all participants with all guests. So, during 1,5 hour one group can listen the story of 3
people only.

Evaluation
The participants are gathering in a big
group
and
answer
the
following
questions:
How do you feel?
What did you learn about Roma people?
Did you learn anything new?
Did you change your mind about Roma
traditions, family and their life?
What recommendation will you give to
your friends if they meet Roma people?

Ways of adaptation
In the end of the workshop the small
groups of the participants are mixed in
order to create new groups. In small
groups people share the stories they have
heard from the living books.

Comments & reactions of participants

The participants learned about the history of the Roma community. During the World War II
the Roma people were oppressed, 500,000 Gypsies were killed. The horses were taken out
or killed, the society did not like the way of travelling life of Romas. They were not allowed
to be themselves. The participants know a little about Roma origin, traditions, their lifestyle.

Other important things

The invited guests must be open to share their experience with others. The participants may
ask very controversial or intimate questions about personal life of the guest. It would be
good if the guests have 1-2 stories from their life, not just sharing what they are doing in
the life. If the invited guests dont speak English it is important to invite translators for each
living book.

other tool on this topic:

World caf

HANDI-SPORTS
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Tool:
Physical
discussion, video
presentation

activity,
and oral

Material: games, physical

equipment (wheel chair, ball
with bell in it, blindfolds, bow
and arrows, boccia, blow
guns,
golf
equipment),
discussion
Goals: to make people realize
the life and problems of
people with disability by being
in situation, it is possible to
deal with every disability, to
gice out information about the
life of handicap people (their
sports and way of life)

Boccia
One of the handi-sport games

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Handi-sports activities:

- Wheelchairs using wheelchairs to manouver and do slalom with a

ball on your lap. At the end throwing the ball into a basket while sitting
down.
- Guiding blindfolded people to a specific place and helping them to
throw a ball into a box.
- Torball playing handball bindfolded,without moving around and just
listening to the ball moving towards you. Players had to be on their knees
and the goal was behind each team and they had to prevent the ball from
going into the goal behind them. (5 people vs 5 people)
- Passing the ball with the bell inside to each other while sitting in a big
circle blindfolded.
- Ceci foot Playing football blindfolded with other people guiding you.
The goal keeper was allowed to see.
- Various different sport activities for handicap people (golf, boccia,
archery, blow gun)

Other activities for this topic:

- Watching professional videos of various handisports (wheelchair basketball,
paraolympics, torball, etc.)
- Discussion and evaluation Sitting down in bigger and smaller groups to discuss our
ideas and thoughts on this topic. Also listening and learning from the professional guy who
is working in this field everyday.

Evaluation

We think the main aim of this day was to

make us realize that we can help disabled
people more than we thought by
persuading and motivationg them with
the you can do it attitude. It made us
think and notice the issue of how difficult
it is to live with disability and how financially
difficult it is to participate in various
sports when youre handicapped. It made
us understand how difficult it might be to
depend and rely on someone else.

Ways of adaptation

We now know that its ok to approach

people with disability on the street to ask if
they need help. It is ok to talk about it.
This will encourage us to be more tolerant
t ow a r d s p e op l e w i t h d i s a b i l i t y a n d
encourage us to accept them to work with
us (physical disability does not mean
mental diability)

A disability is an obstacle in everyday life of a handicapped person

but it is important to always find ways to overcome this!
Matthieu, our trainer

Blowgun
Handi-sport

GENDER ISSUES
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Tool: moving debate and discussion

Material: blackboard, chalk, questions
Goals: To realize of the complexity of gender issues
The method of the moving debate was stating a topic on gender issues by the guest,
division of participants to agree/disagree or to the middle, discussion.
Possible questions/statements for the moving debate:
Woman and men are equal.
Do you know someone who was whistled at?
Men have more sexual needs then women.
Women flirting with men but refusing when it comes to sexual act, are they considered as
bitches?
Are women naturally feminine and men naturally masculine?
Possible questions for the discussion in international groups of 6:
Is homosexuality a choice?
Insulting people about their sexual orientation is worse than other insults?
Do transsexuals have identity crisis?

Agree/Disagree
discussion about gender issues

Evaluation

It went quite well except for the fact that

some people moved with the rest of the
group and were reluctant to share their
point of view. Also, there was a language
barrier between the participants and the
guest who spoke only French and had an
interpreter who missed some of the points
during the translation. There was a lack of
facilitation of the discussion.

Ways of adaptation

Doing the activity in smaller groups so

that everyone would have to participate
more actively.

STAND TOGETHER
for TOLERANCE

Thanks to:

Erasmus + Programme

Our partners:
Portugal:

ESN Minho
Czech Republic:

European Youth Centre Beclav

The French National Agency

Estonia:

Continuous Action
Lithuania:

European Voluntary
Association
SALTES

Service

Poland:

EDUQ Association

All participants:
Adle

Krol

Agota

Kristina

Alice

Luba

Aule

Lusa

Clara

Madli

Cristina

Mari

Gabriele

Nico

Greta

Nora L

Ivan

Nora SolAf

Jana

Ondej

Joanna

Urszula

Kamila

Telmo

SOLAFRIKA 2015

Special thanks to Ondej who helped us with the design of this booklet