Europe: 1200 youngsters ACT for Liberty

In 6 countries, 1250 youngsters from the Netherlands, Germany, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Romania joined our program “ACT for Liberty”.  In 2020, we celebrated 75 years of freedom. But what does actually freedom mean to the youngsters in these days? 

In our many projects in Europe, we meet many youngsters filled with Euroscepticism and a growing distrust in traditional institutions and governments. Our vision is that there are 7 billion talents. With growing gaps between have and have not’s, increasing polarization and nationalism the urgency on a local and global level is high. Corona puts the spotlights in all weaknesses in our systems. 

We need all talents to build a sustainable future. We challenge youngsters to be the architect of their own future; to join voting processes and ACT via even the smallest steps to build a better community in their country. 

Peace is not the absence of war. We limited ourselves to 7 dimensions of freedom that resonate in the world of youngsters. “Democracy, Freedom of speech, Migration & integration, Respect, Equality, Cybersecurity & Privacy and Reliable & Fake news”. Themes that address core values and impact their daily lives.

To create awareness and challenge the youngsters to join the debates we used the “boiling frog” metaphor in a game. When is it “too hot” for you that makes you jump / act. We co-created with our partner Autres Directions and launched the platform ACT! For Liberty. 

Some examples of the overall responses:

• Migration: 62% jumps to keep the right as a refugee to keep their own nationality as well!
• Freedom of opinion: 61% jumps to keep the right to criticize the government policy.
• Equality: 77% jumps to get the right that men and women are paid equal.
• Democracy: 82% jump to keep the right to not be discriminated on your religion.
• Privacy: 75% jumps to keep the right of privacy if you use speech technology services.
• Fake News: 66% jumps to keep the right to be informed based on trustful information.

Their answers were mirrored with facts in various EU countries. Based on these insights they created their personal statements on posters that we uploaded on the ACT! For Liberty platform.  

We organised events in more than 10 cities in the 6 countries. Intergenerational talks created an atmosphere of working together and a bigger understanding of “the others” opinion on freedom and the future of Europe. In June we interviewed and challenged Paul Tang one of the Dutch members of the EU parliament in Brussels. He appreciated our drive to encourage and challenge youngsters in various EU countries. This program was a big learning journey to the youngsters and to us as MasterPeace and our partners Youth Power in Bosnia and Germany, Lumen in Croatia, and MasterPeace Ro in Romania. We are proud that we were invited by 40+ schools to continue this work with the youngsters to challenge them on citizenship.

Corona challenged us to be creative as we were not able to organise big community events but we re-created the gaming platform for single players. Youngsters shared their statements and posters with their peer groups and together we realized a direct and indirect involvement of youngsters of more than 20.000. We deeply believe the youngsters have the future and are willing to ACT NOW.