09/21/2017

Minorities from Ukraine and Germany

A new network to build bridges and support each other (Press Release)

Our aim is to help the young adults become ‘ambassadors’ of their minority group, to exchange experiences, to network with each other, and to support each other. Photo: STP

Next Monday, young committed members of five minority groups from Ukraine will meet up with Sorbs, Frisians, Kurds, Alevites, and Aramaeans in Germany. The guests from Ukraine – who are aged 20 to 30 – want to learn about institutions and regulations that could help minority groups to end discrimination in a dominating majority society, while preserving their culture, language, and identity at the same time. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), which is implementing the project “Building Bridges between Minorities in Germany and Ukraine” together with the Crimean organization DEVAM, will be hosting delegates of the Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Azerbaijani, Lithuanians, and Roma from Ukraine. In November, there will be a return visit by a minority delegation from Germany.

“Our aim is to help the young adults become ‘ambassadors’ of their minority group, to exchange experiences, to network with each other, and to support each other,” said STP-employee Hanno Schedler in Göttingen on Thursday.

In Germany, the delegations will take part in a program to learn more about the political and institutional situation of minorities – and they will visit the Minority Secretariat in the Ministry of the Interior, the Documentation and Cultural Center of the Sinti and Roma in Berlin, the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein, and the regional branch of the Association of the German Sinti and Roma in Schleswig-Holstein. The latter was – together with the Frisian and the Danish minority as well as the STP – able to have the Sinti and the Roma included in the constitution of Schleswig-Holstein.

On Monday, September 25, the guests from Ukraine will present poems, songs, and small pieces of prose in their mother tongues at the Embassy of Ukraine in Berlin. Before, a spokesman of the DEVAM will report about the situation of the minority languages ??in Ukraine. The event is open to the public, starting at 5.30 pm.

The project “Building Bridges between minorities in Germany and Ukraine” is financially supported by the Federal Foreign Office and supported by the advanced training programme “Ukraine Calling”.