„Some people have a Kaaba, my Kaaba is the human being“

By Ruhan Karakul

As a child, you don’t care about religion, politics or what’s going on in the society. Your main concern is about playing, convincing your parents to allow you to stay up late or getting mountains of ice cream. In my childhood, there was a day, I will never forget, because it was the day I was pulled out of my „everything is fine“-bubble. It was the 2nd of July, 1993 when my parents switched on the TV and watched a horrible “movie”. Ten thousands of men stood in front of a hotel that was on fire and chanted slogans like „WE WANT SHARIA!“ or „WE WILL ABOLISH LAICISM!“. My parents were speechless, started to cry. I didn’t understand anything.

Concepts of autonomy and political participation to protect diversity

By Wolfgang Mayr

1) Territorial autonomy – A solution for open ethnic conflicts?

Regional autonomy does not only potentially cater for most of the needs and interests of national minorities, but has its decisive advantage that it does not clash with the interest of the states to preserve full integrity of their territory.

A theater that brings together Frisians and Non-Frisians

By Nele Feuring

During the last year a new Frisian-speaking theater was founded in the north of Germany. The Nordfriisk Teoter wants to establish itself with modern productions as an alternative to the Volksteater (English: people’s theater).

How finding my community has changed my life

By Kristina Kairyte

All my life people have asked me about my surname. “You have a Baltic’s surname. Have you ever been to Lithuania? Do you speak Lithuanian? No, but why?”

HipHop could be the savior of minority languages

By Emre Karci

„Language is the dress of thought“, said Samuel Johnson once. So it’s very important that language is spoken. We can share thoughts, emotions and other things we could not say with our physical or facial expressions. And it’s the sad truth that some languages are threatened as a result of non-use. We need to save them as a part of history, culture and personal identity. We have to keep them alive and make them more attractive to talk. The idea is to get youngsters to talk minority languages in a creative and funny way. So I want to introduce you to “Minority HipHop”.

When people from minority and majority work together

Imagine what can be achieved when people from different backgrounds would work together. Anzhelika and Tetiana did not only imagine what could happen, but actually did it. Together they want to improve the situation of Roma people in Ukraine. In this video, they give us an insight into their common work and share some ideas with us.

Video: Anzhelika Kruhliak and Tetiana Kurach

Photo: Elvir Sahirman

It’s not about what divides us, it’s about what unites us

Silence in the room. The last words from Tobias von Borcke are still hanging in the air. Maybe the pause is intentional, maybe not. But it definitely helps to emphasize his intention. For more than an hour, he has been talking and discussing the civil rights movement of the Sinti and Roma in Germany with the participants of the project. Now, at the end of the meeting at the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma at Aufbauhaus Berlin, he wants to make sure that everybody in the room takes at least one message away: Minorities may have differences, there may even be differences between groups of the same minority, but if you want to achieve some political goals, fight together.

“I prefer travelling to sleeping”

“I have been awake for more than 24 hours now”, one of our participants shared with us on our little evening walk through Berlin. Her sleepless time had nothing to do with partying but with her long travel from Southeast Ukraine to Germany. While we pitied her, she just smiled and said she prefers travelling and meeting new people than sleeping.

She is most probably one of the participants with the longest travel, but for sure not the only one who felt a mixture of sleepiness and excitement at the end of the first day of our project. And what a day it was.

Are you ready?

As we’re approaching the visit in Germany, it’s time to think about what to pack. And this question is not only important for our participants, but also one we are currently asking each other. Have we thought of everything? Anything else we need to organize? A million questions are flying around. Have we answered all emails? Does everybody know what they have to do? Or do they know their itinerary?

As we’re packing all the stuff for the visit and asking each other 5 questions per minute, our excitement rises too. And that is the nice part between all the hectic and yes, even a bit of chaos.

We hope you’re looking forward to our visit as much as we do. Less than four days! So, let’s all go back to packing. 😉

Your organizing team,

Hanno, Julia, Serdar, Suleyman, and Michaela

The program for the German visit ist finally online!

Photo: rawpixel.com via Unsplash

After hours of talking, calling hotels and politicians on the phone, argueing, laughing, and eventually agreeing, we can finally announce the program for Germany. And we’ve already published it on here, too. Just follow the link: Program

We hope you’re as excited as we are. And we’re looking forward to meeting you soon!

Your organising team

Julia, Hanno, Ayshe, Serdar, Suleyman, and Michaela