Zvonko’s quiz has received a reward for the best project of primary prevention, within the preventing project “Living Life without Violence”.
The reward was given by EUCPN, network for preventing crime, confirmed by European commission. The goal of the net is to collect and promote innovating new ways of preventing crime, based on methods which countries who are members of European Union use. By tracking results, they recognize the best approaches and award them. The goal is to exchange contacts and experiences between members of the EU in order to make cooperation easier, and activities which are most effective used in as many countries as possible. We are extremely proud that the network will present workshop created by the members of Status: M to other countries of Europe for using it in working with young people.
Campaign “Living Life without Violence” was developed in cooperation with UNDP and MUP, and Status: M has joined in 2011 within the project “Young Men Initiative”. YMI is a program that includes young men in processes of building a gender equitable society that has been conducted in our region since 2007 with a support of CARE International and MFA Kingdom of Norway! Since 2011, we cooperated in 17 cities, 30 schools and more than 2000 young men. We joined by creating interactive educative activity called “Zvonko’s quiz- Be a man, change the rules”. In that way we contributed in working with young men. Workshops are guided by educator of Status: M, together with preventing officer qualified for promoting activities. Workshops are consisted from three short movies about different situations that can result with violent behavior. Movies are accompanied with discussion in which students can openly talk about society pressure, and are encouraged to say YES to non-violence trough art works and essays. Workshops are created in fun-educational way. Even if they were presented in fun way, the topic is very serious. Through it, young men have the opportunity to see how is the masculinity linked with violence, get to know different kinds of violence, how to recognize them and where and how ask for help.
Interactive workshop encourage young men to find out by themselves the new ways and ideas how to stop violent behavior, but also to have critical view and face everyday violence they are confronted with. It’s important to raise their awareness for not tolerating violence in any form which is needed because of the high tolerance of mental violence in society, which is also bad and can cause drastic consequence that young men aren’t aware of. Mental violence can be gossiping, verbal humiliation, excluding from activities…
Within workshops students have the opportunity to hear the lecture of preventing police officer linked to violence in general, but also with their region. After the workshop students have the opportunity to see Zijah Sokolović’s play “Violence, there is no excuse for violence”, as well as performance of famous musician Matija Dedić and band Apokaliso, and other artists.
It is important to learn how to recognize violence and indicate it. In most cases violence is focused on weaker people and is caused by wrong assumptions, and can be caused by group in which we are in. Society is putting on different roles that can be established on different gender prejudices. Popularity of bullies is decreasing over years. Problems can’t be solved with violence because aggression only encourages violence. To stop violence, it’s necessary to teach young people how to recognize violence, make them aware of the consequences of violence, stimulate them to take responsibility for their actions and to build a healthy society.
Responsibility of all of us is to build positive society, but the success is only guarantied if they have the support of other sectors of society. Europe recognized our achievements and rewarded us as the best ones!
The problem of violence in our communities is the responsibility of all of us and the only way we succeed is to actively strive to build a non-violent society, without exception, and to support those who are in fact doing their best every day!
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