EuropeanChristianLGBTQI+Forum- Workshop

"Allpiecesfittogether"

23November2019,Berlin,Germany

The workshop “All pieces fit together - on spotting and combating extremism in church and society” took place on 23 November in Berlin, Germany, and was organised in cooperation with the European Christian LGBTQI+ Forum. The workshop participants were young people from the LGBTQI+ community or those young leaders who work with this group in their countries. Most of them came from countries in which isolation, exclusion, discrimination and violent extremism towards minority groups are everyday realities.

The workshop was facilitated by the Pavlina Manavska, our Campaigns Coordinator, and involved young people coming from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Poland, Denmark and England. During the workshop, the participants reflected on what extremism is, on the different forms of extremism leading to violence and on how we can explain the influencing factors leading to radicalisation.

The participants identified and worked on three different factor categories: factors relating to the individual, relational factors, ideological / religious factors and community / institutional factors

The most important part of the discussion was the one in which the participants shared personal stories / experiences from their local communities. This highlighted that even if realities are different in different European countries, still the issues people face have the same, or very similar, contributing factors. This led the group to conclude that more platforms should be created where young people can learn from each other’s experiences on how to deal with the youth radicalisation and extremism issues