150 activists from across Europe descended on the Kurt Lowenstein building in Werftpfuhl, East Berlin, headquarters of the International Falcon Movement, and dedicated to socialist education since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

SDLP Youth travelled as a joint Irish delegation along with Labour Youth to the annual Winterschool training seminar for European Youth political organisations affiliated with IUSY (International Union of Socialist South) and IFM-SEI (International Falcon Movement - Socialist Education International). Titled “Make Capitalism History”, the eight day seminar included debates, media working groups, and even the odd bit of socialising.

After a first night tour of the imposing former boarding school, our home for the week, delegates participated in an ice-breaking simulation game to show what capitalism is and how it fuels world inequality. Players were split into 5 groups each representing a continent and based in a different area of the building. Every continent had a government, a police force and two factories, and each ‘player’ was given a role which would influence how their prospects would develop. There were international borders and a monetary system (twiglets!) from which you had to feed yourself and pay tax. Poorer continents had fewer resources and were forced to exploit workers and neglect services. The World Bank had favourable policies towards the richer continents and turned a blind eye to widespread corruption.
In just two hours we gained an amazing insight using this small mock-up�participants in the African and Asian sections were overworked, malnourished and inpovererished, with most skilled Americans and Europeans living well. All that, and unions, pirates and people smuggling too.

Each morning we were presented with a range of workshops to choose from on subjects including economics, Balkan Relations, trade issues, the Millennium Development Goals, introductions to various ideologies and the histories of different reasons. After lunch we had a couple of free hours to relax with films, play pool or take advantage of the many of the group activities on offer; fire juggling and guitar lessons, card games, or master classes in ‘international chat-up’ � a useful exchange of your favourite lines in over 20 languages.

Late afternoons were given over to Media Working Groups, relaxed but practical training sessions exploring various campaigning and awareness raising tactics. Using video, web, sculpture, radio, animation, newspaper, black theatre, photography, lego and more, each group produced a piece of work on topics ranging from globalisation to gender equality, racism and human rights � these were then shared with the whole seminar on the last night, with some very impressive results.

Socials and entertainment were laid on each night, and the Irish delegation worked hard to maintain our national stereotype by leading the songs and craic till the wee small hours. The highlight of the week was the epic New Year’s Eve party. New Years is a special event at Winterschool, with people from 5 different time zones in attendance. Bottles popped, fireworks cracked and songs were sung each hour from Russian New Year at 9pm to the obvious climax, the Irish ring in at 1am. After a particularly late night New Year’s Day was a lie in for all, until a bracing lunchtime snowball fight brought the energy levels back up.

An unforgettable 8 days, with much learnt and many firm friends made. Aside from the practical skills (and new drinking games) gained, the magic of Winterschool is the chance to meet and get to know so many people from every country and political climate in Europe, sharing experiences and discussing differences and hearing first hand about life in conflicts and regimes we only could have read about. SDLP Youth now has strong links with comrades in Moscow, Madrid and everywhere in between and were able to give our friends a real insight into the history of the Northern Irish conflict. We ended the trip with some time in Berlin, soaking up the atmosphere and history of that city, already looking forward to December 06.