Solidarity actions on videos

How do young people understand solidarity and how they share it in their environment? Humanitas captured some of their responses on video. With a camera-man, we visited three schools in the last week of June, filmed two community actions and asked children and youth many questions about solidarity. At first, we visited high school in town of Velenje, where pupils organised community action “Solidarity and communication habits”. This included various activities:  organisation of workshops about communication for entire school, selecting good thoughts and quotes, which were printed on stickers and posted all over school. As one of the pupils Gal told us, the aim of the action was to renew good communication habits between people at the school (not just pupils), which disappeared during the epidemic of COVID-19. But the aim was also to greet the students entering school, letting them know that this is their institution, which is there to help them and where they can find solidarity, emphasized Gal. We asked his classmate Maja how should we encourage solidarity among very young children and she told us that the best way to do this is “to set an example. If they will observe solidarity in older generation through their childhood, then this will become part of their everyday habit.”

A week later, we also visited  and filmed 8th grade of elementary school in town close to Ljubljana, Kamnik. There, the children decided to express solidarity by making paper flowers and giving them to health workers in the local health centre. They said they wanted to express gratitude for their efforts and solidarity during COVID-19 and beyond. They gave flowers to director of the centre who promised to distribute them to nurses and doctors.