Europe has always been a continent of migration and cultural diversity, and has drawn both cultural and economical wealth from this. Recently, the ongoing crises in Europe have lead to a rise of extreme right-wing and anti-European populism in many European countries, making worse the situation for immigrants and minorities in terms of racism and discrimination. Old manifestations of intolerance receive new vigour and new forms of racism, coupled with economic, social and political marginalisation of affected groups, deepen their exclusion from active social participation.

In November 2012 the new project “U-CARE – Urban Culture Against Racism in Europe” started, where 11 organisations in 8 countries join forces and pool their knowledge to combine an anti-racist/anti-discrimination peer coaching approach with urban culture and media. Young people with diverse cultural backgrounds (including the national majorities) will be educated in national seminars and an international summer academy 2013 to become U-CARE Junior Coaches. They will empower themselves to spread the message of increasing mutual understanding and combating racism and discrimination.

Being part of urban youth scenes themselves, they have potentials of reaching other young people that are mostly inaccessible for adults from social majority groups. Thus, the U-CARE Peer Coaches will carry the torch of respecting cultural diversity and deconstructing negative stereotypes on to other young people. Together with them, they will do workshops, run campaigns and create public events making the U-CARE message visible, reaching 1000+ young people all over Europe. After this project, the U-CARE Junior Coaches will be ready to run further activities on their own.

Coordinator of the project is jfc Medienzentrum (Germany), partner for Italy the Associazione Fabbrica Europa and COSPE. Other partners are ROOTS&ROUTES International, Stichting ROOTS&ROUTES (Netherlands), Mira Media (Netherlands), SmouTh (Greece), Subjective Values Foundation (Hungary), EuroEst (Romania), RIF (France), Brouhaha (United Kingdom).

International Exchange Seminar #3
Florence, May 7 – 9, 2013

U-CARE REPORT
Migrants & Refugees in Italy

IDENTITY AT THE CENTRE
A participatory project for the citizens of Montevarchi city centre.

U-CARE research on opportunities and threats of peer education in Tuscany
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CHARMing Youth Work Project Presentation
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