Tuesday, July 24, 2012

If One Decision Is Made, The Next Step Is Obvious


Photograph by Anna Rok
On the 17th July the weather condition was not pleasant for polish summer. No sunshine, quite cold outside and refreshing air stopped many people at home and they decided to just stay in bed with a blanket. But if your motivation is strong, unfavourable external conditions   cannot be a pretext to not doing something that you have already planned. If you are ‘real activist’, of course.

So, disregarding the rain, I decided to go for a lunch to the kebab-bar in the centre of Warsaw. I was very inspired by morning meeting of our group with social campaigns trainers and heavy rain couldn’t stop me. “No diversity, no kebab” in the context of xenophobia and intolerance in Poland is the main slogan of our project. It is not a big deal to buy and eat a kebab, even if it is raining, but you can have a nice small talk with the seller, who will tell you more about his life in a host country. Which difficulties does he wrestle with, why did he come to our city, where is he from? Those are the questions, that you can just simply ask and have to no longer wonder why he is selling kebab in these streets in Warsaw. It is not necessary to eat only Polish dishes like bigos, pierogi or żurek all the time. If you leave more space in Polish restaurants for tourists, then they will be thankful for sharing the dishes of your national cuisine. Stomach is not only a way to someone’s heart, it may also be a way to spread diversity and tolerance.

Photograph by Anna Rok
Not all social campaigns of our six groups are correlated to food. Tuesday was the day of presenting our ideas for campaigns, for briefs that have been created by other team. So called brief is a paper, that include more developed concept for interest of public opinion in one social problem. How engage other people in the topic (why should anyone care)? – is the most important question for activists. At the beginning we worked on a different issue. But our trainers decided to switch the briefs: every group till the end of the program continue working on a different brief/topic. For some of us, this idea of switching the briefs was controversial. Developing the new projects could bring some fresh air in them and that was a main goal of this decision. So, on Tuesday every group have presented a couple of ideas for the social campaign. It was not so easy, but also exciting working on the brief of other team. Just like Marina (Ukrainian fellow) said: “Sometimes, it is difficult to find a good solution for the topic of other group” and just give up lovely design. On the other hand, in the opinions of other members, new brainstorming could bring more valuable campaign. Another question was the quality of briefs, that were incomparable and it could happen, that one team receive poorer project of social campaign. After all, the most important thing is not our comfort in one topic, but creating a really multicontextual product created by different minds coming from (living in) diverse cultural and national backgrounds. After consultation with our trainers we got feedback about what should be changed or evolved and we started to develop the most appropriate slogan and create visual designs of them.

Photograph by Natalia Kotwica
 Most of the HIA Warsaw fellows entered the programme with the idea that the world in which we are living should be changed, because some human rights are not respected and people are not equal. Like we discovered during the sessions, lectures and meetings with educators, generally creating our briefs with assistance of Marek Dorobisz, creative director of “Next”, this concept of changing must be referred to local background rather than large global/social environment. Only very specific, concrete and ‘narrow’ projects have a chance to change human mentality and habits of thought. We should also remember, that the human rights issue is a European concept, that is why the carefulness with promoting our ideas is advisable, not only in Non-European countries, but in communities, who have migrated to Europe from Asia, Africa or Near East. However, human rights defenders have to be sure, that their target group really needs help, education and interest, because universal values could be used as a form of cultural, economic or political imperialism. After that, getting a certainty, they can use their motivation and take an action for social change.

Photograph by Natalia Kotwica
At the end of a day, we planned to organize a picnic, but the weather was not favourable. For this reason the picnic took place one day later. All of us brought some snacks and various foods. We were sitting on the grass and had a great time in a quiet environment with a positive energy. That is what people from four different countries, who spent a lot of time working and having fun together needed almost at the end of HIA-programme. All experiences and knowledge, which we had a possibility to get during almost one month, can be very useful in the future. If our motivation ‘to make the world a better place to live for all’ (no doubt it can seem very naive activity) fighting with discrimination in a positive way: enforcing egalitarian values, will be so strong like currently, we received a great opportunity and some skills to do it. I believe, that participation in HIA-programme is not only an excellent proposition to self-development, that will be used for better appearance of person in curriculum vitae. Maybe I am blind. Am I? The future will bring the answer, for myself too.   
- Natalia Kotwica (Polish Fellow)

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