One of the activities that the Sports Working Group arranged for Spring Agora Rhein-Neckar was hosting a workshop with the theme of bullying. Despite few participants, the workshop was a successful example on how an interesting topic can gather AEGEE people together.
For Agora Rhein-Neckar the Sports Working Group (SWG) invited Adam Wilde from the LGBT rugby team in Berlin to share his thoughts and experience on how sport is connected to bullying. As many may know the SWG is working on homophobia in sports and homophobia is just a smaller part of bullying.
The workshop, hosted by Adam Wilde together with SWG speaker Ángel Rodríguez, made AEGEE members open up about their personal experience of bullying and surprisingly many participants of the workshop have been affected about this vicious topic at one point or another in their life.
One of the methods used during the workshop was sharing information about homophobia in sports. Participants watched parts of the interesting BBC documentary about homophobia in sports together and afterwards listened to Adam Wilde’s personal experiences and projects to fight bullying.
What engaged the small group of participants the most was sitting in a circle and talking about personal experiences. When wondering what impact sports have on bullying the response was more positive. Sports can give people strength, it can bring a togetherness feeling amongst people, and it can help deal with anger. For one participant, sports have helped deal with bullying and been a tool to become stronger physically and mentally.
In regards of how bullying can be fought the ever-returning idea of visiting schools was brought up. Actually, it was difficult to come up with specific actions on how Adam Wilde together with his team can combat bullying, but it made the participants wonder about it and the workshop raised awareness about an important topic!
All participants of the workshop left the room in Mannheim very satisfied, and happy to have been part of the interesting talk. It was a pity that not more members were able to take part, especially since Adam had taken the journey from Berlin. However, it was motivating to see the general interest there is in the topic!
Written by Patricia Anthony, Secretary of the Sports Working Group