Democracy in Action – From the Personal to the Political

During thistraining course participantswill have a chance to become familiar withtwo civic education methods respectively - Betzavta and Applied debate. Further, participants will engage in reflecting upon these methods and developing ideas regarding the way in whichthey can utilize themin their own working context. Finally, the international composition of the trainingaims tofoster development of intercultural cooperation on the international level.

Betzavtais a Hebrew word which means "together". The title of this method for learning about democracy, which was developed by the Adam Institute in Israel, makes up the programme and philosophical background at the same time. Betzavta questions the traditional and unsatisfactory paths of conventional conflict resolution with surprising seminar units and presents in its place the concept of creative conflict resolution. With the help of a special conflict dilemma method, it achieves the essential conditions for tolerant social interaction: thewillingness to mutuallyrecognize the rightto personal freedom and other peoples' needs. On this basis, the fourstepsof democraticdecision-makingprovidethe conflicting parties with a valuabletoolfordealingwithconflicts in a novel way. Betzavta is an internationally renowned democracy education programme used in schools and non-school educational institutions.

Applied debatepresents several different approaches to debate outside of its usual, competitive setting andexplores debate's potential, across different contexts, to engage with discrimination and build understanding between various groups in society. Through the Applied Debate course, the participants will improve their critical thinking, argumentation, rhetorical and empathy skills, widening their perspective to seek alternatives to the polarized, dichotomous thinking (us versus them) so widespread in the current local and international political domains.

This training course is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.