On Friday, June 9, 2023, the event for social activism, organized by Radio MOF and the Youth Educational Forum “ENGAGE 2023”, was held for the twelfth time at the Youth Cultural Center. The themes of this year’s “ENGAGE” were feminism and youth activism, where domestic and foreign activists shared knowledge and experiences related to civic engagement, culture, social change, human rights, digital democracy, freedom of speech, activism and media.
Through the ENGAGE 2023 microphone, personal inspiring stories were shared from online activism, feminism and labor rights, to slam poetry readings and the fight for a voice for marginalized citizens. Montenegrin activist Nikolina Pavićević spoke about the advantage of digital, as opposed to traditional, activism. She pointed to examples of “Rainbow washing” – a capitalistic tool used by corporations, or “Pink washing”, which is also used in the form of activist signs, but in fact T-shirts made by female textile workers in terrible conditions are used for this. Geraldina Guerra Garces from Ecuador spoke about the different types of women’s activism in Latin America. She emphasized that one cannot talk about freedom, peace and development without the participation and voice of women: “We want to be alive. It is activism against violence. In Latin America, we women are victims in a very cruel way. For example, in Ecuador, one femicide occurs every 23 hours. 6 out of 10 women were victims of violence. Latin America is considered the second deadliest region in the world.” At “ENGAGE”, slam feminist poetry was read by Adelina Tershani from Kosovo, who also spoke about the problem of femicide: “Women in Kosovo are not well represented in the labor market and only 20% of women are employed. They mostly do unpaid work and the family doesn’t recognize it. We see that the situation is improving because of young people and feminist movements. It makes us feel better and it’s important for us to be vocal because we know change will be slow.” Kristina Ampeva from “Glasen Tekstilets” explained how they grew from a small organization into an influential factor for the protection of women workers’ rights: “Today, we are one of the most active organizations when it comes to workers from the entire private sector. We are more recognized outside the country. In Macedonia, we held the first strikes after a very long period, we initiated criminal charges against employers. We provide free legal assistance. For the corona alone, we gave help to over 12,000 workers, which strengthened our legitimacy. Also, over 450 lawsuits received since 2014. Therefore, the message is that you should not dwell on injustices! Before, it was not allowed to talk about the bosses, and now the textile workers are encouraged.”
As part of this year’s edition of the social activism event “ENGAGE”, the attendees also took part in several workshops – reuse of old clothes with screen printing technique organized by “Partizanska stampa”, techniques for dealing with stress and breathing with SiFu Predrag Petreski, as and mountain survival techniques with experts from Mountaineering Club “Macedon”.
The evening was dedicated to “ENGAGE: The night”, which was taken over by “Gola Planina collective”. For four hours the attendees enjoyed the music of new, young bands: “KEM”, “Zanadu”, “The Ooz”, “Niandra”, “Sivert” and “Rend”.
Through “ENGAGE”, MOF and Radio MOF strive to raise the level of citizens’ awareness, their presence and active action, both online and in the physical space.