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Youth Leader, Youth creativity
Start date: Aug 1, 2015, End date: Nov 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

"I do not agree with what you say but I will fight so that you have the right to say it" (author unknown) Freedom of expression is an essential part of the operation and the development of democracy, currently one of the most discussed concepts and issues. However, the term has been so widely used and conceptualized it does not always have the same meaning for everyone and that its meaning can differ according to time and place. This is one reason why a group of Belgian young people between 18 and 25 decided to organize a youth exchange on the subject. We met in September at Botassart with 35 motivated young people from Portugal, Albania, France, Poland, Croatia to live this great experience together, both on a human level and at the level of acquired personal skills. This project was an opportunity to build an exchange between young people around the concept of freedom of expression by asking simply questions like: Why is free speech important? When is it threatened? What about freedom of expression on the canvas? Can we laugh at everything? What are the restrictions necessary for that freedom? To help us go further in our reflections, we had the opportunity to meet the Director of Amnesty International Belgium, Philippe Hensmans. After this awareness and this overview of issues related to freedom of expression / censorship in Europe, we launched a project to create 4 games / animations dealing with this topic. Before you start creating and to allow the group to realize the implications of creating a game, the young people had the opportunity to meet Quintens Thibaut, game creator and the association partner "Let's play together "this globetrotter who has traveled the world to meet with the local population through its games, convinced of their usefulness in the meeting of the" other. " On our last day, we welcomed young people from the youth of Chiny- Florenville, Bouillon and a team of the association Coala. They had the opportunity to experience the results of our debates, discussions but also and especially to test the games invented by the participants during their stay. Beyond the debates of funds, we believe that the exchange itself is a vector of tolerance, including through the clash of cultures that produced them and allowing everyone to realize that the other, while being so far away, is not so different! After this new experience, we will try to offer several new international projects in the future to our young people aware of the richness of difference.
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