Being Jewish is sexy! Being Roma is sexy! Volunteering is sexy!
Volunticipate - community building through voluntary work across Europe
a partnership building activity between Roma and Jewish youth organizations
During the 1st-7th August 2011 thirty young volunteers and NGO professionals are meeting in Hungary to build partnerships between Roma and Jewish youth organizations, across eight countries in Europe. The theme of the “Volunticipate!” project is community building and volunteer work related to social change. Participants will plan projects together, and exchange experiences about minority identity and grass roots civil activism.
The Volunticipate! gathering will happen adjacent in time and place to the Bánkitó (Lake Bánk) festival www.tekerjatora.hu/en in Hungary, which is being organized for the third time by MAROM Budapest www.marom.hu/en between 4-7th August 2011. For over a month streets of Budapest and sourrounding cities were full of posters promoting a positive minority identity, and encouraging activism: “Being Jewish is sexy!”, “Being Roma is sexy!”, “Being Hungarian is sexy!”, “Whoever has something to do is sexy!” – and so on. Festival organizers chose this form to fight the negative experience of belonging to a minority, which is the disempowering effect of the rather scary growth of far right extremism and racism in Hungary, and Europe. Festival organizers promote positive identity, self-organization and dialogue between minority groups – and to say no to exclusion and intolerance.
The Lake Bánk festival brings together over 3000 NGO activists, artists, students – and anyone interested in social change, and dialogue with minority groups, such as the Roma, the Jews. The festival provides a forum to exchange best practices for grass roots initiatives. Ties between Hungarian and Slovakian culture are also strengthened by common cultural projects that happen during the festival.
Participating organizations of the Volunticipate network:
The MAROM Europe network www.maromeurope.org (MAROM Paris / Stockholm / Paris / Valencia);
The TernYpe network www.ternype.eu (Romaversitas, Budapest www.romaversitas.hu, Roma Education Center, Bratislava http://www.mladez-ocr.sk/; Amaro Drom, Berlin – www.amarodrom.de )
and further organizations: Agenta Impreuna (Bucharest, www.agentaimpreuna.ro), Romodrom (Praha, www.romodrom.cz ) UCCU Roma Informal Educational Foundation, (Budapest); Haver Jewish Informal Educational Foundation (Budapest – www.haver.hu ), René Cassin (UK, http://www.renecassin.org/ )
This project is realized through the support of the European Commission.
The content of the project does not reflect the opinion of the European Commission or the Mobilitas office, therefore now responsibility is claimed towards the project on behalf of the supporting bodies
