Our Third International Training Took Place in Budapest

From May 18 to 22, 2025, we welcomed 28 youth workers from Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic to our third international training in Budapest.

Under the title “Theatre of the Oppressed in Non-Formal Education with Young Refugees”, learned hands-on theatre exercises to create spaces for empowerment for young refugees.

• Experiencing the whole process of the Theatre of the Oppressed: From demachanization and trust practices, over image theatre to preparing and performing a Forum Theatre play
• Learning about the background of Augusto Boal and the theory of Theatre of the Oppressed
• Meeting youngsters who performed a Forum Theatre play in Budapest and learning from their experiences
• Exchange between youth workers on how to implement Theatre of the Oppressed methods in a sensitive and discrimination-aware way

The theatre program was led by Anna Végh and Kriszti Scholtz, two very experienced Budapest-based trainers of the Theatre of the Oppressed. They led the group through the whole process of Boal’s empowerment-oriented theatre method, shared their knowledge about its background and theory and discussed crucial questions on its implementation in the context of refugee youth work. The highlight of the theatre program was the performance of three short Forum Theatre plays on bullying, patriarchy and labor migration. As part of the Forum Theater method, the audience – or spect-actors – had the option to intervene and to change the power dynamics in the scene which represented typical power dynamics in our society.

On one afternoon, we also invited three guests from the Hungarian Helsinki Committee who shared their experience of organizing and performing a Theatre of the Oppressed project in Budapest. The project manager and two participants, one from the Hungarian countryside and one from Afghanistan, shared their knowledge and time with us to tell us how their project came about and to answer all our pressing questions.

Besides experiencing and learning how to implement these empowerment-oriented theatre methods, a very valuable aspect of the training was to strengthen our community in standing together against discrimination and for empowerment across diverse and often increasingly challenging contexts.

During our training in Budapest, the participants exchanged experiences, strategies and hopes on refugee youth work in their fields of expertise. The training helped to increase the sense of community we are trying to build throughout the whole project.

This intensive training has left us with many impressions, new sources of inspiration and deepened connections, all of which will help us to achieve our goal of empowering refugee youth.

Our final international training will be held in Krzyżowa, Poland, from 22 to 26 November 2026. The Call for Participants will be published on this Website.