Q: What word would you use to describe yourself? – Excited

Q: What bought you here? – I’m here with fellow trainers from Europe to develop a tool for youth workers to recognise, manage and transform hate speech.

Q: what are things are you facing back home? – Scotland is not immune to hate speech, for example historic hate speech around religion, racism and in general Scotland is a great place to life but unfortunately there are times where people are subjected to hate speech.

Q: when you hear the word hate speech what comes to mind? – Anger

Q: Had there been a moment where you have felt confident to tackled hate speech? -There have been a number of times where I’ve had the opportunity to address hate speech the most recent was towards an elderly lady who used racist words and I tried to speak with her about the origins of those words and now it may negatively affect some people.

Q: How did this make you feel? – I was glad I could have this conversation with her to be able to connect with a person. At that time, she explained that it was normal vocabulary for her and I just told her that it was not a normal word that can be used in any context in this time and age.

 Q: What are you ambitions for the next 10 months (in December 2017), what do you think you can do to help transform hate speech? – I’m nervous because I will be delivering what we have developed and I’m curious about how it will be received by people that we will be training. But I am also very encouraged by the fact that we have a strong support group and an international support group where we will be able to look at hate speech in different contexts and try to address at its root causes and it’s all about planting seeds of change.

Q: What skills and knowledge have you gained from being part of this training course? – I’ve developed so many, working with such a diversity group of people from different backgrounds and experiences I think has enriched me in so many ways. I will take back to Scotland and for the next coming year I will continue to learn from this group.

Q: Why is this project important to you? – I belong in different communities and I think I can bring a lot to these communities.

Q: Have you learnt from other participants? – I’ve learnt about group dynamics, it’s a learning journey rather than I learnt this skill from that person etc. it’s about having different conversations and learning from these different experiences and trying to connect and seeing similarities and differences from my own experience, my own life and background really.

It’s been an absolute positive experience and I hope to use what I’ve learnt here back in Scotland.

Q: What does equality mean for you? – It means a lot but I also understand that sometimes equality can be used as a buzz word and it’s important to practise equality than just say and try to live equality try to put yourself in other people’s shoes and try to connect with people who are different from you have different thinking in terms of experiences.

I think the world is so different and we can learn so much from each other and that’s what’s important for me really.