Do your worst

Short description

A game designed to get youth to reflect on the effects of bystander intervention. How they might make a situation related to hate speech worse or better with their reactions.

Aims & Objectives

Material and equipment needed

Instructions

Step by step explanation

Activity 1: Do your worst (30 min)

The activity consists of 10 micro-stories of incidents/situations involving hate speech.
The activity is simple: discuss the Incidents/situations you can find in the Annex.
Start by asking the youth to find the worst possible thing to do in each situation, how could they cause more harm to the situation, start a fight, cause friendships to stop or couples to break up. There are many different ways to use scenarios like these but what this approach offers is a good way to start the conversation. Youth tend to find it easier and more fun. In this way, you can start a heavy topic in a lighter and even funny way.

Activity 2: Discussion and reflection (30 min)

By looking at and arguing why this advice is bad, the youth also get a chance to start reflecting on communication and thinking about people’s reactions to behaviour. Make sure not to stop there though.
To deepen the discussion, it is good to also consider how the problem could be solved seriously or what advice could be given that could really help. To deepen the reflection of the young people, it is good for the instructor to lead the conversation with questions.

Questions to lead reflection further:

Is that hate speech?
What is the problem here?
Would all people react the same way in that situation? Why? Why not?
Would age affect how people would react? How about gender? Popularity? What else could have an effect?
Are some responses wrong and others right?
Could it happen that no one responds? Why?
If faced with this situation what would you find to be the right thing to do? why?

The stories are phrased so that participants are asked to solve a problem for someone else. In this way, the youth get a certain distance from the subject, which can make it easier to see solutions.

Micro-stories like these are frequently used in violence-prevention education. They provide an opportunity to reflect on situations that may arise without personally relating to the material. Their aim is to promote social skills in difficult situations, give the youth tools to react, help others and take care of their own safety.