On December 1-2, 2021, Equinet hosted a training to help communication experts from equality bodies countering hate speech on- as well as offline.  The training approached persuasive writing techniques, in particular writing and effectively communicating messages.

Persuading people is hard. Persuading internet trolls is harder. Persuading me to participate in mock debates is nearly impossible, unless there are Belgian waffles and fries available on completion.

At the beginning of December, I was lucky enough to attend an Equinet (European Network of Equality Bodies) training session in Brussels on persuasion and hate speech. After a couple of weeks of doomscrolling for updates to COVID restrictions and of course, a pre-departure test, I set off to the capital of Europe to meet with communication officers from peer organisations. The objective of the training was to learn how we as equality bodies can not only convince our audience to agree with us, but also how we can influence people to take action towards creating fairer societies.