CreateReact Training program: Kick-off in Berlin

The protection and promotion of our citizen rights in Europe are not something we should take for granted. Examples of rights abuse range from privacy rights to Roma discrimination. Since member states and the EU institutions themselves are oftentimes not able or willing to provide sufficient protection, it is up to civil society to act.

European Alternatives supports this struggle with its Citizen Rights project. One important component of this project is its training program “create react” for activists, which started last weekend in Berlin and will travel to five other European cities. The focus of this first training program was surveillance, privacy rights and digital activism. We started Friday afternoon in a famous Berlin hackerspace with three different discussions and panel on surveillance.  In order to not only talk but also act on this issue, we stayed in the hackerspace for a cryptoparty during which experts helped to make our digital devices less prone to surveillance.

The weekend continued with different sessions and workshops covering different aspects of digital activism. We learned for example about liquid democracy, a tool to enhance online participation, how to visualize data and how to use gaming as a campaign tool.

After this rich and fruitful weekend, we are looking forward to thenext training session in Lisbon.