Two days of action against online hate speech: the MAP project continues its journey!
For two days, Pau became a veritable hub of ideas, discussion and European cooperation! 🇪🇺✨
Youth workers from France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Lithuania came together on the 21st and 22nd of July 2026 as part of the European MAP – Media Awareness Perspective project to take part in a new train-the-trainer course organised by Pistes Solidaires and hosted by our partner, the Centre Social La Pépinière. This training session focused on a topic that is more relevant than ever: how can we prevent and combat online hate speech among young people?
On the agenda: participatory methods, debates, role-plays, analyses of real-life situations, small-group work and plenty of collective intelligence. Together, the participants explored what lies behind hate speech – its causes, its impact on individuals and society, as well as the stereotypes and narratives that fuel it.
The aim? To provide professionals with practical tools they can use directly with young people within their own organisations.
The second day allowed us to go even further by discovering how to construct positive counter-narratives, transform hateful messages into stories that inspire hope, understand the reporting mechanisms on social media, and reflect together on the boundary between freedom of expression and hate speech.
Beyond the learning outcomes, this training course also provided an opportunity to forge links between European partners, share experiences from the field and discover the city of Pau in a friendly atmosphere. Because the best projects also stem from human connections.
And this is just the beginning!
Over the coming weeks, each national team will return to their home country to organise their own workshops with young people and put the tools developed as part of the MAP project into practice. This new phase will help to multiply the project’s impact across Europe.
📢 Stay tuned! We’ll be sharing the first local initiatives, the resources created and the next steps in this wonderful European adventure very soon.
Because combating hate speech also starts with learning to listen, understand… and build more inclusive narratives together.
