From May 30th until June 2nd, Young FoE Europe organised a mini-training in Brussels on working with rural communities. This training was part of the project “Youth and Communities for Environmental Justice”. The aim was to help young volunteers from Belgium, Ireland, Latvia and Spain to engage with rural youth and to develop joint activities with young people from rural areas in their communities.
Participants had a broad introduction on power and privilege in order to understand power relations in the context of working with rural youth. They learnt come community-organising tools and discovered new methods in order to organise activities through anti-oppressive decision-making processes. The programme also included non-violent communication tools in order to build a common understanding and deal with conflicts.
The last part of the training was dedicated to activity-planning. Participants had the opportunity to develop future activities (events, communication strategies, etc) in order to share the learning developed during the training and to make it concrete. The follow-up is happening, any activities on the way!