Learning as Mind Opening

The article discusses how to identify a set of common principles for the different anti-racism and cultural diversity training activities. It argues that considerable experience was gathered through the different European Youth in Action courses organised in 2002-2004. With reference to the aims of the EU Youth Programme, the following eight principles seem to provide a common framework for anti-racism and cultural diversity training activities: • a recognition of the social effects of exclusion, discrimination, racism. • a comprehension of how the various forms of social oppression (race, class, gender and sexuality) relate to each other. • questioning dominant power and privilege and the rationality for dominance in society. • addressing the marginalisation of minority voices and the undermining of the knowledge and experience of minority groups. • confronting the challenges of diversity and difference in our societies. • recognising that youth programmes should work towards being more inclusive and more capable of responding to the needs of minority persons. • acknowledging the ways in which the youth activities can be instrumental in producing and reproducing racial as well as gender, sex and class based inequalities. • avoiding to address specific problems as isolated from the materials and ideological circumstances in which youth find themselves