The Youth Exchange offered a unique opportunity for 35 young people from Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Romania, Spain, France, and Turkey to explore realities of populism from different perspectives tackling the commonalities and differences in each country. Throughout the exchange, participants were able to develop their competencies (skill, knowledge and attitudes) in the following fields:
· Populism and migration
· Critical thinking
· Shielding from populist discourse in the elections
· Populism awareness
· Debunking fake information used in populism
· Youth engagement and advocacy
Participants were able to apply what they had learned through designing and executing a series of social media campaigns.
This project is co-funded by the European Union under Erasmus plus Programme.
Testimony of Desert Bloom participants:
Thank you desert bloom for giving us such a great chance to learn about “Unpop that Populism”, discussing many other topics such as forms of populism, national realities, populist discourse, and got the chance to do our own campaign. We enjoyed the Team building activities where we were asked to do multiple tasks in order for us to know more about the Populism, Morocco as a country and to establish a sense of community and learn about each other. Second day was dedicated to Clarification of concepts and forms of populism, we were divided into 5 groups and given the mission of discussing 5 key concepts from our national perspectives; Resilience, Advocacy, Critical thinking, Populism and Active citizenship. It was a fruitful discussion, we shared our realities giving examples for each concept. During the third day we continued our discussions tackling different national realities and cultures. The intercultural night was unforgettable, we presented different types of populism in our country. We talked about Al sharif al Hussein bin Ali who protected Christian and Muslim holy sites in old Jerusalem. Also we presented Jordan in the intercultural night wearing Jordanian traditional dresses (thoub), danced the Dabka, and gave out Jordanian Souvenirs. Participants enjoyed Jordanian thyme, spices, Arabic gum and the famous Jameed (dried yogurt). On the fifth day, we did a field visit to Essaouira city.
The 6th day focuses on populist discourse, we discussed our role when talking about populist and how to act when hearing fake information and how to know if it’s fake or not. Four participants made their own workshops. We enjoyed the “Wheel of life” workshop.
The last two days were dedicated to application. Each group was asked to do their own social media campaign on a relevant topic. Groups created artistic posters with nice messages such as “Be a Global Citizen, Exchange Culture ”, ” Connect globally, Learn Locally”, “So much of who we are is where we have been and who we have met”, “Explore new Horizons, Expand your Mind”.
Please check the Exchange video.