“If we want change, we must include everybody in the process.”
Imagine that you are a youth from one of the largest ethnic minorities in Europe, you can’t speak perfectly the language of the country you live in, you have a different cultural background, you are suffering from poverty and you receive the lowest level of education. Therefore you are confronted with community prejudices, racism and stereotypes. You are a youth from one of the most disadvantaged minority groups in Europe with the highest rate of unemployment. You as a Roma, considered as Europe’s forgotten citizen.
2010 was the “European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion”, which sounds really interesting. A bit theatrical though, and also distant, especially if we do not personally face such problems in our daily life. What are the results of the thematic year and what do the keywords “social inclusion” and “exclusion” mean exactly? We always hear about facing exclusion in Europe meaning that certain groups of people or individuals who are wholly or partly excluded from full participation of the society they live in, do not know about the benefits Europe can give them. In order to think about our privileged situation as young people who have the opportunity to study and to live with the benefits of Europe, a group of young people raised the question with the firm belief that in order to create a unified Europe AEGEE needs to take a step out of its comfort zone: Do we live in the European reality? The fact is that 80 million EU citizens have such limited resources that they cannot satisfy their demands of natural needs. Moreover, one out of six people considers him/herself to have a disability or a long-term health problem. There are many other groups of people who are particularly at risk to get excluded. These problems encompass the questions of marginalisation, migration, identity problems, religious and ethnical problems, participation in democracy and global responsibility. For many young European citizens, Europe remains nothing more than an intellectual concept, far from their realities.
The Social Inclusion team at the Concept Development Meeting, June 2011
In April AEGEE realised that it is high time for such a big student organisation to deal with the integration of young people with fewer opportunities into society. A huge step was made towards this big current social issue by electing the new flagship project on social inclusion. We realised that it is our responsibility to have a real impact on society and undertake this responsibility. Thus, AEGEE decided to fight for social inclusion during the next two years. This can give the possibility to thousands of young people to feel Europe, to get active within European society, to participate, to make changes, and also to open their mind to cultures and diversity.
After assessing the needs of the target groups and the strengths of our organisation at the Concept Development Meeting, held in Brussels in June, the flagship project team decided to focus on Roma minorities, the group living on the edge of society in almost every European country. We, as members of AEGEE, would like to achieve their positive representation within society and empower them to take an active role in their local society as well as to contribute to building a European society.
In the meantime, we want to keep the social inclusion topic, which would include all the upcoming projects of AEGEE and thematic activities of the locals about people with disabilities, Muslim people in Europe and people from LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) communities to have a wide perspective of the excluded groups living with us on our shared continent.
Written by Dóra Kocsis, AEGEE Piliscsaba