Welsh youngsters learn to rethink racism

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/27/welsh-youngsters-rethink-racism-think-project

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The white men on the screen are shouting, fists jabbing the air. "Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?" and "If you all hate Pakis, clap your hands". The young people watching are silent, serious. "It's embarrassing," they say afterwards. "They are making us all look bad."

The men in the film are from the Welsh Defence League – a spin-off of the far-right English Defence League – and the teenagers watching them are taking part in the Think Project, a three-day course aimed at stopping young white people in south Wales from getting involved in far-right extremism.

The project was created by the Swansea-based Ethnic Youth Support Team (EYST) in response to the racist and Islamophobic abuse experienced by the organisation's ethnic minority clients. In south Wales there were 1,421 racially motivated attacks last year.

"We felt it was important to work with young white people to help them understand about the different people who live here," says Rocio Cifuentes, EYST director. "We knew there was a need for education, especially for the most disengaged young people."

The project links with agencies working with teenagers excluded from school or young people not in work, education or training and delivers the course as part of their programmes. The material covered is wide-ranging: racism, migration, asylum, extremism, religion, human rights. There's a powerful role-play in which the teenagers are given case studies of asylum seekers – an Iraqi family in fear for their lives; a woman fleeing the threat of female genital mutilation – and asked which they would allow to stay.

"We aim to get a conversation going," explains Chris Mort, who runs the course with colleague Nicky Nijjer. "No-one listens to these kids at school. They have never had the chance to debate and have their views heard. This is about including them, never putting them down. We want to get them to be a bit more political, build them up a bit."

Mort is a white retired police officer from Swansea; Nijjer a British Indian Muslim originally from south London. "They are two of the funniest people I've met," says Lauren Farr, 17 – one of nine young people on the course at a training centre in Cwmbran, near Newport. "You hear your friends and family saying these words and you go along with it. Now I realise how that might make people feel." "You don't get judged in here about what you say," agrees Robert Elson, 18. "You feel you can be open."

The Think Project has worked with 200 young people in two years. An independent evaluation published in January by academics Ted Cantle and Paul Thomas described it as "brave and necessary" and found it has a 90-95% success rate in changing participants' views. At the start of the course, for example, most young people believe that asylum seekers come to the UK to claim benefits; by the end most have learned otherwise.

Both Mort and Nijjer stress that, on the whole, the young people they work with are not racist, just lacking in knowledge. "They have probably missed a hell of a lot of school," explains Nijjer. "And those gaps in their education are being filled by the rubbish in the media about Muslims and asylum seekers and by the far right groups who are looking for vulnerable young people to recruit."

Those groups include the Welsh Defence League and the National Front, which organised "white pride" marches in Swansea. Britain First and the British National Party fielded candidates for Wales in last week's European elections. Labour, Ukip, the Conservative party and Plaid Cymru each retained a seat.

The Think Project began with a three-month pilot in 2011, funded by the Welsh government before securing three years' funding from the Big Lottery innovation fund in 2012. That funding ends next year, and EYST hopes to secure backing to roll it out nationally. "We don't know of any other projects like this in the UK or even in Europe, " says Cifuentes.

Jake Harris, 18, who is about to start work at McDonalds after a long job hunt, says: "I've thought about racism because we touched on it at school but not in as much detail as this." "I didn't know about all this asylum stuff," agrees Cherry Stace, 16. "I thought people were coming over for the benefits and the jobs, because everyone says it. Now I see it's totally different. I know the facts."

"I've learned loads," says Molly Cavanagh, 17. "I've seen footage of the Welsh Defence League on Facebook and used to believe what they said about Muslims being terrorists, but now I know they're not. You just believe what you hear because they are so persuasive. This is the first time I have been proven wrong about this sort of thing. When I see my friends saying things I will prove them wrong too. I just didn't think. Now I know."