From 24th of October to the 1st of November, Czech organization “Be International” hosted a training course in a very beautiful, calm and ecology-friendly place Jezírko with participants from 10 different countries – Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Poland, Ukraine and Russian Federation.
The Training Course „Streetgizer” was based on non formal education methods, embodied and experiential learning principles, non violent communication skills, etc. Very important to note, that the TC „Streetgizer” emphasizes the quality of public actions as strong tool for driving attention to the topics. Because the public actions as a part of public space. Therefore, the public space is an inherent part of active citizenship. It is an arena where people can take action in the streets. And that is what all participants from this TC were done. From the beginning of the project we have been very excited what about will be the TC. And it was really nice, when on the first day in the evening all participants were convened for playing a game, more based in „get to know each other“. From that part of the evening we realized, that the TC will be exciting. And, never mind, that all participants were so tired from the road, we were very enthusiastic to see what will wait us on the following days. Since the first day, our travel to the “street actions world” began. Firstly, during few days we have explored, learned, discussed about the history and types of nonviolent actions. In small groups we have synchronized and shared our knowledge and attitudes towards the phenomenon of street action. Secondly, when we have received a lot of useful knowledge about street actions, we have started to prepare and focus on the quality of street actions and get to know the tools for practicing our skills. Therefore, we have met with local Czech experts who have had successful experiences by organizing street actions. Proposed ideas were very good, but on our project were so many creative and talented people, in this case we decided to create our actions by ourselves. We were divided into the groups and started to create our Streetgizer actions. Interesting to emphasize, that all participants were so intrigued about street actions, that everyone worked so hard that those actions could be perfectly organized. We had four street actions:
1) Syreczech. This group of participants had organized a happening in order to rise awareness about Czech-Syrian partnership. Had prepared brochures, posters with quiz about Syria and Czech, created a tables, when interesting in Syrian culture people could have their`s name wrote in Arabic. Parallel with this, in the street, other part of the group had been giving a national Czech cheese for all people. And, in the end, all group member were dancing a national Syrian dances in the street.
2) English friendly place. The idea of this action had come from the fact, that in Brno a lot of places, where goes a lot of tourist, are written in Czech language. And it is very hard to understand about what they are talking about. In this reason, one of our group of participants decided to get local people to pay attention to this fact. They had created a stickers – «English friendly place» and during some hours by walking in the centre in Brno, they had put stickers there, where is everything are written in Czech.
3) Stop smoking. During days, what we have spent in project, we realized that we have a lot of people who are against smoking. And that is why idea about non smoking was so simply created. The main attribute for these street action were a big cigarettes. Moreover, the idea of this action was that during walking in the centre in Brno, people with big cigarettes, when they will see a people, who were standing and smoking in the street – they went to them and start beat them with big cigarettes. The reaction of foreign people were shocked. Someone from fright did not understand what was going on, someone started to laugh and someone just walked away. However, even after this action smokers said that they do not stop smoking.
4) Food not bombs. As far as we know, homeless people are everywhere. And also we know that a lot of foods from the shops, restaurants and other food places just throw out. And we decided to help homeless people. At night (the day before street action) our group of people went to the city Brno and went to the mention above places to find a food from the garbage containers with food. Fortunately, was found a lot of food. Then, during all morning our street participants were cooking a food for homeless people. In the evening all participants from Streetgizer project with prepared food had gathered in to the main squire in Brno for giving a food for homeless people. Very hard to put into the words how happy were those people, when they received a hot food from us.
In conclusion, important to note, that emotions and experience what we had during Streetgizer project are unforgettable. We learned not only how to be creative and how to organize a street actions, but we have learnt how to live in this cruel life, when every minute is so priceless.
