Solidarity Academy: Borderlands

The region of Central-Eastern Europe shares a lot of common things. They are of various backgrounds: historical, cultural, social and political. The countries of the region also face similar challenges and struggle with similar, same or shared problems. Journalists and reporters play extremely important role in these societies. Many of these issues can be observed on the level of small local communities. Those communities resemble the whole societies in a way. Due to shared past, present and future local communities in V4, Balkan and Eastern Partnership countries also face similar problems and could benefit from good practices and implemented solutions. These regions (unlike many others) have been also historically shaped with numerous border changes and conflicts between the nations and ethnic groups. Therefore the case of borderlands is extremely relevant in the region.

During the project we are going to rethink an idea of borderlands together and to look for a deeper and wider understanding of this topic. This concept, however, serves as a pretext to see some problems in a new light and can be used to find new tools for describing reality.

At the workshops and lectures held during the Solidarity Academy (SA), 16 participants will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and improve their skills on such issues as borderlands on both local and global scale. Workshops and tasks that the participants deal with will be both theoretical and practical. The participants will have the opportunity to work in a big, international team, in smaller expert groups and individually under the supervision of a trainer. Major part of the SA program will be held in Gdansk (6 days). However a small part (2 days) is planned for field trips to Kaliningrad (Russia), Kartuzy (Poland), Szczecin (Poland) and Żuławy (Poland). The candidates are asked to pick a preferable site for a trip. Each group (consisting of 4 participants) will go to a different site. There participants will have the opportunity to conduct a fieldwork and check some tools and concepts developed during the workshops and their own definitions of the borderlands.

Eligibility

The Solidarity Academy team is looking for 16 active, aspiring and young (20-30 years old) journalists, reporters, activists, bloggers, analysts or writers from Visegrad Group, Balkan and Eastern Partnership countries who are willing to improve their editorial and journalism-related skills and engage themselves into the international networking process.

Costs

Organizers cover the costs of travel (up to € 100) and the participants’ stay in Gdansk, trip to the project place (Kaliningrad/Kartuzy/Szczecin/Żuławy) and stay in that place.

Agenda of the project and program of the Academy

The agenda of the project:

5th of August: deadline of the call for applications

13th of August: results of the recruitment

17 – 25 November: Solidarity Academy in Gdańsk (6 days) and in project place (2 days)

Application form

The application form is available here. Please insert a piece of your journalistic work (approximately 1000 – 5000 characters) to the application form.

Please note that all applications must be received by 5th August 2018.

Language

The working language of the project is English.

Participants’ commitments

Applying to the Solidarity Academy – Baltic Sea Youth Dialogue applicants are expected to be aware of:

• The project’s aim, main values and rules;
• The project’s agenda (especially the fixed dates);
• The costs of travel that participants will have to cover on their own (up to € 100);
• The full commitment and engagement into the implementation of the final project and other project tasks according to the agenda.

More information and contact to the organizers

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the organizational team: academy@solidarity.org.pl.

More information about the project (you can find there some information about previous editions of the Solidarity Academy) → ecs.gda.pl, new.solidarityacademy.eu

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We are looking forward to meeting you in Gdansk!

Partners of the project:

• The Common Europe Foundation – editorial office of Eastbook.eu (Poland)
• The Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe in Wroclaw – editorial office of New Eastern Europe (Poland)
• Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Czech Republic)
• József Attila Circle Literary Association of Young Hungarian Writers (Hungary)
• Balkans, let’s get up! Organisation (Serbia)
• Literary club (Slovakia)

The project is supported by a grant from the International Visegrad Fund.