On August 2, a series of various events dedicated to the next conference “New Belarus”, which is scheduled for August 3-4, took place in the Lithuanian capital in the conference hall of the LitExpo exhibition center.
During the first session of side events, the participants discussed assistance to Belarusian political prisoners and their families, support for Belarusians through representative offices of democratic Belarus abroad. There are also topics on the destruction of stereotypes and improving interaction with young people, the development of Belarusian education. In addition, a presentation seminar was waiting for the guests of the event: “decolonization” vs “secondary colonization”: public opinion of Ukrainians and Belarusians.
It all started with a master class on the topic “The future today: how to understand and work with young people.” Margarita Vorykhava, Adviser to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s office for youth policy, spoke about who young people are, how they communicate with society, and how young people convey their message to politicians. According to her, young people often encounter stereotypes and problems in communicating with others.
Representatives of the main humanitarian aid organizations – Volha Zazulinskaya ”Country for life”, Andrey Stryzhak – the BYSOL Foundation and Alexey Leonchik from BY_help – spoke about the key aspects of helping political prisoners and strengthening national identity.
According to Andrei Stryzhak, Belarusians now face two main challenges: “Because of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the complicity of the Lukashenka regime in this war, we are treated, without understanding much, as accomplices. The Belarusian passport has become very toxic, and so has Belarusian citizenship. This is the first main factor that our problems are increasing every year. The second challenge is that the big investment donors, the states that allocate money, no longer see such a big political claim to support these areas, and begin to focus on something else.”
But despite this, Alexey Leonchik says that the humanitarian foundation has its first major donor, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. And the need is measured in millions of euros for the repressed and their families.
Alexey Leonchik hopes that, given the way negotiations with donors are going on, the amount in the humanitarian fund to support repressed Belarusians may reach 4 million euros.
In turn, the head of the foundation” A country for life ” Volha Zazulinskaya said that all organizations have already reviewed protocols for safe assistance to people.
Yulia Yukhno, a representative of the People’s Embassy in Italy, spoke about how they work in Italy and attract attention to Belarusians, as well as how they collect donations to support political prisoners. Yulia noted that she wants to make a culinary program to introduce Italians to Belarusian cuisine and thus to Belarusians themselves as a nationality.
