You can contact the awareness team if you have experienced discrimination or harassment, need to deal with conflicts or emotions, or simply need someone to talk to. The team members will listen to you and, if necessary, consider together what courses of action are available.

Contact

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About Us

At Chaos events, a lot of people come together. They all have distinct needs and are different and unique in their actions, emotions and thoughts.

Considerate behaviour towards each other and respecting personal boundaries should be a matter of course, but even at an event there might be situations where people are being degraded or discriminated against through words or actions. Harassment, sexism, racism, discrimination of homosexuals, bisexuals, trans people or other queers, ableism (discrimination against disabled people), anti-Semitism, racism against Romnja or Sintize, and classism (discrimination against poor or socio-economically disadvantaged people) are never okay, even if they happen unintentionally.

The awareness team is there for you during and also after the event, and works closely with the security team and the medical and fire emergency team, CERT.

What is Awareness?

Awareness work means sensitizing people to be aware of themselves and others - especially those who do not conform to social expectations. Perpetrators of discrimination and boundary violations are often oblivious of it, but those affected are very much aware of it. As the needs of the affected people often remain invisible, we want to support them especially in taking their needs seriously and asserting them. Even what others might label supposed “trivialities” or try to argue away can hurt and impair, and hence is worth being addressed.

An important part of awareness is recognizing the power of definition: Exclusively the people affected can decide whether their boundaries have been violated. Otherwise, the mainstream of society often assumes the right to decide who is discriminated against and who is not. It is important to us that people who are otherwise not heard or taken seriously are also noticed.

For us, this means: on the one hand, we support those affected in processing situations that they themselves have experienced. We offer a place for confidential conversations. We lend them an ear and, if necessary, help them to develop ways of dealing with the situation and thus strengthen their ability to act.

On the other hand, if desired, we communicate with the people from whom discrimination and transgressive behavior originates or originated. The goal here is the aforementioned awareness: to create understanding and awareness of how and why one's own behavior has violated the boundaries of another person. The goal is to take responsibility for one's own behavior and to respect boundaries in the future.

When it comes to dealing with conflict, we are also available for mediation or accompaniment.

How we work

The Awareness Team is there to help you especially if:

  • you have been harassed or discriminated against,
  • your personal boundaries have been violated,
  • you witness (personal or structural) discrimination,
  • you feel uncomfortable and need a person to talk to.

When you contact us, we usually first ask you what happened and what you need right now. You may already have specific ideas about what we can do. Depending on what you want, we can, for example:

  • offer you a quiet space where you can withdraw (alone or with us) and process what you have experienced.
  • contact your friends and acquaintances.
  • try to clarify a stressful situation (as far as possible) (e.g. also by trying to explain to transgressors why their actions were transgressive).
  • try to find out, together with you, what would help you best.
  • come to you in conflict situations at the event and mediate.
  • accompany you to the arbitration board if you decide to seek arbitration.

What approach is best for you is always up to you - we won't do anything without your consent. It's okay if you don't want to or can't talk about something. Any reaction, whether sadness, anger, despair, speechlessness, …, is okay.

The awareness team will be available on site during the event (at the latest from day 0). Before, during and after the event you can reach us at the contact options listed above.

Disclaimer: The awareness team consists of people who are sensitized for awareness and have experience in various areas. We will support you as best we can. However, we would like to explicitly point out that most of us have no therapeutic training.

Here's to a wonderful chaos event! Take care of yourselves and each other.

Your Awareness Team

Join us

The Awareness Team is a team with fixed members that meets throughout the year (online and at Geekends). At events themselves, there are daily team meetings. Regular exchange and reflection are an essential part of our work. We continuously work on ourselves, our own attitude and awareness, educate ourselves and get to know each other better. For awareness work we need a mutual foundation of trust, therefore spontaneous angel shifts without preparation during an event are unfortunately not possible.

Our team for this event is already complete. If you want to become a part of our team: The best time to join is about 3 to 6 months before an event. Feel free to talk to us on site during an event to get to know us in person, or send us an email to team@c3awareness.de. Tell us something about yourself, your experience with awareness, and your motivation to join us.

What we would like to see from those interested:

  • Self-awareness and reflection (you know yourself and your limits).
  • Self-organization and reliability
  • Teamwork and conflict management skills
  • Empathy
  • Willingness to learn
  • Openness and the ability to listen
  • Discrimination sensitivity, including recognition of structural discrimination.

We look forward to getting to know you.

You can also visit our webside.