- How D-A-S-H europe is strengthening the networking of young people against right winged extremism and xenophobia -

The small room with all the computer is more then overcrowded. Over 50 young people are swarming on metal chairs, crouching on the floor or following the workshop from the neighboring directing room. Because what happens here on a hot day beginning of august is extraordinary - not only for the visitors of KUDA, the local media center in Novi Sad, that is situated in a housing development between the local post office and the fishmonger.

30 young people, that are active in antifascist and antiracist initiatives in Brandenburg, are visiting the capital of Voijvodina, the autonomos province in the northern part of serbia. They meet in order to exchange experiences and thoughts with young media activists, artists and NGO associates from Novi Sad. The topic: how can the right winged extremism be confronted, that has dramatically increased lately in both regions? Which role do old and new media, as well as self-run networks play in the struggle against racism and exclusion?

The young activists got to know each other during a conference end of february 2004 in munich: "NEURO--networking europe" has brought together more then 250 representatives of youthgroups from more then 30 countries from all over Europe and beyond, in order to discuss for three days strategies, topics and perspectives of networking in Europe. NEURO has been hosted by the european networking initiative D-A-S-H, whose internetplatform has been presented publicly during the opening of the conference.

Spontaneously the youth groups from east Germany and Serbia agreed on a youth exchange for the coming summer holidays. There was no financial support nor were additional grants available, because the time was too short in order to file any applications. Anyhow they managed with much creativity and a lot of their own initiative to develop and conduct the project "Mapping Right Winged Extremism" in August 2004.

And also here D-A-S-H has played an important role: through the technical support that D-A-S-H is offering free of charge, the five day workshop in Novi Sad could be prepared and organized in a way, that costs were minimized. This was possible because the young people were communicating long before the workshop directly with each other on mailinglists and websites. That way they already got to know each other and could discuss and decide essential questions in advance and in preperation of the workshop.

The experiences of the D-A-S-H associates Susanne Lang and Florian Schneider have also been usefull on-site, to help solving immediate and short-term problems as well as the question of documentation and debriefing of the workshop, so it will become as sustainable as possible. In the end the cooperation between the young activists from Brandenburg and Vojvodina is not a singular event, but the basis for a longterm cooperation, whose results should be accessible for other groups in Europe, that happen to be in similar situations.

And this is probably how the philisophy, that stands behind the European networking platform D-A-S-H, can be described best: "Instead of condenscending to provide an argumentation for young people, how they should deal with right winged extremism and xenophobia, it is rather about supporting und bringing forward the horizontal networking of groups, initiatives and individuals, that are already active in their different local contexts." says Florian Schneider, project leader of D-A-S-H europe. This is requiring an infrastructure, that needs to be legitimized again and again from the scratch, that shouldn't be constraint by institutional boundaries, but should only be orientated after the needs of self-determined networks of young people.

But by focusing on flexibility and spontantaneity, the main pillars of the project - stable offers, transparency, credibility and patience - become most important. D-A-S-H is trying to realise these principles by systematically focusing onto Open-Source-Technologies: The source code of all used programms, but also the know-how, that lies in the results of networking, has to be publicly accessible. "Only through that we can guarantee that the developments are sustainable, reproducible and that they can be shaped and further developed by young people", says Schneider.

Compared with costly designed products from advertising companies, the european internet platform may seem a little unimposing. But the deliberate decision to go without spectecular effects and the conventional online - falderal is the focus: the center of attention are the activities of young people and their needs for exchange, networking and collaboration. The structure of the project D-A-S-H europe is trying to impose this based on the experiences of the german pilot project on four levels: introduction of best practice projects, service and support as well as research and syndication of content.

In difference to the static pages of the German-speaking version, the European D-A-S-H platform is more a collaborative experiment than a representative organ. At the end of the first developmental phase, the so far developed and customized contents, offers and programs will be published as a self-contained software distribution. In that way, youth groups and initiatives from all over Europe will have the possibility to set up themselves the developments created by D-A-S-H europe in a simple installation and customize it in a way that it fits to each specific local context and needs.

The examples for collaboration and cooperation, that have already evolved from the meetings, workshops and online-offers of D-A-S-H, are manifold and could almost be continued endlessly: media activists and VJ's from the south of spain get to know young artists and curators from Riga and develop a whole series of shared projects. A young british software developer, that is engaged in his new project with the fall of the Berlin wall, came into contact with german federal archives, that make video material accessible. Slovenian and croatian computer game programmer meet with US-american media activists in order to look for potentials for a joined development of a game, that can communicate to date political knowledge and awareness instead of pure enjoyment.

The the direct exchange between programmers and code-developers on the one hand side and users, activists and content -producers on the other hand side has an increasing importance. D-A-S-H europe is doing pioneer work in some projects: from the development, testing and publicising of the first open source multimedia codec "Ogg Theora" to the development of distribution networks, that are sharing the burdens of high-bandwidth offers amongst different servers, up to the multiplicity of software projects that have been developed in cooperation with the five partner institutions and their associated institutions in the fields of content management, webhosting and online-collaboration.

The youth groups that have met in Novi Sad are immediatly profiting from that. Long after the trip to the Balkan is over and the activists are back to dealing with their daily problems in their small home towns in the east of Germany, the cooperation with their new partners from Novi Sad is now truly starting: pictures, films and texts from the trip to Serbia are being uploaded, edited and discussed in the extra established wiki - a website that can't just be viewed but also edited by each visitor. Now the counter visit of the activists from Novi Sad to Brandenburg is being planned.

Starting from the visit of the president of the parliament up to the talks with community organizers in a Roma camp in Novi Sad, the main conclusion from all the joined work and the many impressions is described by Daniela from Bernau near Berlin: "The most important thing is to realize, that we are not alone with the difficulties we have to deal with locally. And that all over Europe there are young people, that are facing similar challenges in different situation, that can only be overcome together."