Sports plays an important role in the development of young people. It helps maintain good physical, emotional and social health. Sport also helps combat discrimination and hate speech. Radica Stojanovska, Marija Jovanovska, Angela Spasovska, Filip Georgievski and Angela Rajcevska learned this, which were representatives of Volunteer Center Skopje and participated on youth exchange with topic “When We Play We Don’t Hate! Combating Hate Speech  Through Sport”, which was held in Rudnik, Serbia, from 22th September till 1st October.

On this exchange, besides the participants from Macedonia there were participants from Serbia, Romania, Lithuania and Portugal. Sharing the experiences of our cultures and learning the essence of the topic through everyday interactive activities which carried them out the organizators from this youth exchange, participants learned how through sport activities to help in preventing the spread of hate speech.

Together they discovered the roots, the forms and the consequences of hate speech, and encouraged them to fight against hate speech by participating in sports activities. Participants of this exchange had opportunity to participate in daily recreational hiking tours through which they discovered the beauties of Rudnik and discussed their ideas for creating sport activities that would raise public awareness of the fight against hate speech.

As a result, at the end of the exchange, participants presented several sports activities to combat hate speech.

Angela Rajchevska