Living Library Tallinn

The Living Library Event

The Living Library event in Tallinn took place at the World Refugee Day on the 20th of June 2019 in the office of Estonian Refugee Council – Eesti Pagulasabi.

ERC had other activities at the same day in frames of the celebration of the World Refugee Day: African dance workshop, Photographic exhibition created during the project with refugees and tasting Middle-Eastern cuisine.

The advantage of this venue was that many of human books were in contact with the Council and involved before in their activities, so, they felt like home in that space.

Before the Living Library event about 9 different preparatory meetings took place: online meetings with organizers-librarians, 3 meetings of main organisers one week prior the event; 3 with the Human Books – to introduce the concept and working on their stories; meetings with our local partner – Pagulasabi.

The event started at 18:00 and had 3 reading sessions. The booking system was the distribution of the readers by the reading slots: participants could choose the Human Book and the slot time; the subscriptions were reflected at a chart board as readers came in. Each reading session lasted for 30 mins (approx.. 20 mins “reading” and at least 10 min. for questions); there were breaks of 15 minutes between the reading slots. The event finished around 20:30 and the team stayed for a circle of reflections, evaluation and dinner together.

Impact

The Project allowed training 6 Living Library facilitators and over 10 potential Human Books. More than people directly involved further on in the multiplier event (Living Library event) got trained in the methodology. Out of these participants and associated people, at least 3 right now are involved in other projects of the organization and the others are connected to it. Thanks to this Project the relations with two organizations in Estonia got stronger. We hope for further cooperation with the Estonian refugee Council, which was the hosting organization for the local Living Library event and strongly supported that. As organisation we could develop contacts with a group of migrants and refugees, who reside in Estonia and look forward to involving them and cooperataing with them in the future.

The relationships with the partner-organisations of this Project on international level got stronger. The consortium of partners is planning to follow-up this KA2 project. On the other hand, Trajectory@ is already involved in a new European KA2 project as partner, which is focusing on inclusion of the LGBTQI+ refugees, continuing addressing the challenges of inclusion of refugees in Europe and applying its competences in Human Rights Education.

On the very internal level, the new experience of coordination of another KA2 project brought much learning in dealing with administrative issues, communication, working on developing and disseminating the outcomes and intellectual outputs etc. – which is impactful and important for Trajectory@.

The scope of the impact unfortunately was not that strong as expected – through the multiplier event we didn’t’ manage to reach widely the local community. However the communication with local migrants and refugees allowed building the connection with some non-Estonian cultural/national groups, to see their readiness to get involved in the activities on local level and especially, their readiness to be open to interacting with Estonian communities. Most of the Human Books, who undertook the preparation process and took part in the Living Library event, were open and interested to take part in other Living Libraries as well as, depending on their capacity, join other activities. The process of preparation, implementation and evaluation (through non-formal approach) of the Living Library helped Human Books/facilitators of migrant and refugee origins to better understand the Estonian community and contributed their better connection with Estonian community (according to the evaluation).

The Catalogue

Samson - Are African scammers?

Nigerian guy who was born in Muslim family and turned to Christianity; – he faced a lot of troubles in his homeland because of that and now is building his new life in Estonia.

Dami - “Happy-go-lucky child”

A girl who has found a way to create her own kind of “happy”. Come to share the story of her journey.

Shereen - “A strong and small girl.”

A story of a Syrian girl who became an adult too early because of the war and still has hope and believes in goodness as a kid.

Anrike - “Peace in Exile”

Estonian fashion photographer volunteering for refugee women in the camp with her Project “Peace in Exile”.

Nata - “Changed the country - not my ideas”

This human book is a story about the pathway to political asylum, which is still in process. Also it is a story of a person, who currently has no place to call “home”, for changing so many places of living.

Mystery Book - The title of this Human Book was a secret to discover

(A Nigerian young woman, who came to study in Estonia after her husband, who obtained his job here and building their life in spite of all the intolerance in society. This human book is a story of migration.)

Stakeholders

The project at local level in Tallinn involved several stakeholders:

Estonian Refugee Council – supported the Living Library event hosting it in their spaces, in frames of its celebration of the World Refugee Day 2019. Supported the dissemination of the information about the event.

Active Club – supported the dissemination of the information about the Living Library event.

Organisation Description

TRAJECTORYA is a non-for-profit, non-party, and non-governmental training organisation.

It was established with the aim to promote life long learning and non formal education as tools for enhancing human dignity and intercultural dialogue.

Trajectorya provides training and consultancy to non-governmental organisations and educational institutions working with young people, educators and adult learners.

Our objectives are:

To promote Human Rights Education and Intercultural dialogue as a pre-requisite for the development of a “culture of peace” and as a contribution to democratic stability;
To provide organisations, educators and adult learners with knowledge, skills and attitudes in order to further strength their role in the building of civil society;
To empower organisations, in particular working with the most vulnerable groups to develop projects, strategies and activities to address racism, xenophobia, discrimination and gender-based forms of violence affecting them and their community;
To promote and support life long learning and non formal education as useful tools to achieve these goals.

The Coordination team

The local Living Library in Tallinn was possible thaks to the engagement of the Coordinators Team,
the Librarians, Facilitators, Interpreters and specially to every and each Human Books with their live stories.

Xavier

Founder and board member

At international level Xavier collaborates in a regular basis as expert and educational adviser on the development of training programmes for the European Commission, the Education Department and the Youth Department of the Council of Europe, and the Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue among cultures.

Currently, Xavier is working on the Council of Europe Programme: Youth Together that seeks to reduce the risks of social exclusion and violence that young refugees, especially minors in transition to adulthood, are exposed to. It supports the social inclusion of young refugees and their access to education, self-development and autonomy through youth work and non-formal education activities.

Mayyar

Activist

Mayyar Skhaita is a social activist from Syria with refugees status. Has been involved in several campaigns raising awareness of the refugee situation in Barcelona and Catalonia where he is living.

Laura

Psychologist specialised in Human Rights

In 2014, Laura got involved as activist in Amnesty International and, since then, she has carried out different roles within the organisation. Nowadays, she’s coordinator of an activists’ group, organising and implementing actions and campaigns of awareness to promote and defend Human Rights. Also, she’s responsible for Human Rights Education in her group, taking part on the research and elaboration of the HRE strategy at Catalonian level.

Laura has taken part in several national and international projects and, as well, she has been working as technician at ATENPRO’s program in Red Cross, project related with the attention and protection of gender violence’s victims.

Currently, Laura is running some internationals projects with AHEAD, association of educators in Human Rights from Barcelona, organising and implementing workshops and some public actions, such as Living Libraries.