At the start of their program, our new participants in the vocational preparation program (BvB) go through various training areas, the vocational school and the leisure area, but they also take part in several workshops. One of these workshops deals with the topic of democracy.

Our employee and trained democracy mentor Sandra Lempges teaches this workshop and looks together with the participants at which countries in the world have democracy and which do not, what forms of democracy there are and why the Basic Law is so important. They also looked at why democratic competence also has a lot to do with media competence. An appropriate buzzword here is "hate speech", which is now very widespread on the internet and makes it immensely difficult to engage in (not only) political discussions, for example. The fear of becoming a victim of hate speech prevents many people from expressing their political opinions. Unfortunately, these are usually people who have a democratic, open and tolerant view of the world. This in turn means that anti-democratic people are more likely to attract attention online and spread (right-wing) hate speech.

Another part of the workshop revolved around the topics of freedom of expression and freedom of the press as well as elections and the question of why people should vote at all. At the end of the day, our participants learned that they themselves are an important part of democracy and can actively shape their future.