UER Activities in Europe
Athens, Greece — September, 2001
Margie Doyle-Papadapolou (Athens, Greece) held a wide-world meeting to report back from the UN World Conference and present basic RC theory and information on ending racism. People did paired listening, then ended with each person speaking about his/her hopes for the elimination of racism.
Belfast, Ireland — January, 2002
Sheila Fairon from Belfast, Ireland contacted two organizations which deal with "Ethnic Minority" issues (a preferred label in Ireland) after the Durban conference to report on the Conference and begin to build a relationship with them. In the following March, Sheila worked with those organizations during the European Week Against Racism and conducted two UER workshops which included the Chief Executive of the Chinese Welfare Association, several police trainers, etc.
Edinburgh, Scotland — Fall/Winter 2002
Mike Spring followed up with a UER contact from Durban who was the Director of the Central Scotland Racial Equality Council, did an introductory workshop for a group of black people she gathered together. Out of the workshop came a fortnightly class that met for six months. The class will start up again this Spring, 2003.
Iceland — September 2003
Susanne Langer (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Anne Helgedagsrud (Bergen, Norway) led a weekend workshop in Isafjordur for a group of activists committed to ending racism that UER had initially made contact with in Durban. While they were in Iceland they also did a radio interview about UER, a town meeting, and a meeting with the board of an anti-racism organization.
Fredrik Eklöf (Malmo, Sweden) is leading a diverse group of parent leaders as part of Multicultural Parenthood, a project that he designed together with an Arab friend to reach parents who have immigrated and to discuss issues that are usually problematic or hard to understand for many of these parents. He is teaching the parent leaders RC as a tool for them to lead their parents' discussion groups in an inclusive manner and as a way for them to deal with issues that come up for them as leaders. One goal of the project is to start RC/UER support groups for these parents.