Rebuild Ukraine Lab ended today in Berlin. Only around thirty people from the whole EYP network were there, and I was one of them, as a Rebuild Ukraine Ambassador. I still find that number a bit crazy when I think about how big EYP is.
What the Lab was like
It was more formal than a normal EYP session. There was no big teambuilding, no long General Assembly. Most of the four days we sat in working groups and worked on our topic, and the rest of the time we listened to people who work on these things for real.
I was in the FIMI group. FIMI means Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference. Simply put, it's how a foreign state pushes fake or twisted information into another country to change how people think or vote, and what can be done against it. Most people hear about this as "fake news". In reality it is a lot more organised than that.
My part: the money
Before the Lab everyone in the group picked their own research direction. I took the money side: who pays for these campaigns and how the money moves. Fake websites, bot accounts and paid influencers are not free. Somebody pays for them, and if you follow that money you can find who is behind it.
One thing I saw again and again in my research: a site gets sanctioned and closes, then a couple of months later it comes back with another name. Same people, same content, new address. So closing one site is not enough if the money behind it keeps flowing.
I did a lot of research before coming to Berlin, so inside our group I was the one who knew this part best. Honestly that felt good. It's one thing to read about a topic alone at home, and another thing to see that your work is actually useful for the group.
Experts and the Bundestag
We also talked with experts and visited the Bundestag. I listened really carefully in both. A lot of things I read before started to make sense when I heard people who work on this every day. Some things I had read in reports, they explained in two sentences with a real example.
Being one of the younger ones
I was a bit younger than most people there. At the start I thought about it a little. In the end it didn't matter at all. Nobody cared about age, they cared about what you bring to the table. Our group worked really well together and we made great progress in four days.
What comes next
The Lab is over but the work is not. Next comes advocacy, which means taking our proposal to people who can actually do something with it: politicians, organisations, anyone who can push it forward. Our group lives in different countries, so everyone takes it home. For me that's Finland.
Thank you to everyone who made these four days happen.