Awareness means establishing and cultivating considerate, responsible and solidarity interaction with one another. Spaces are to be created that strengthen the self-determination of different communities – in a manner of partnership and solidarity. Through awareness work, we learn to respect everyone’s boundaries, how to counter discrimination and how to support people who (have to) experience discrimination.

The messenger community is a very special place for most of us. Some found a first or second family within the community, many are really well connected and share many friends in all kinds of places – We of course do not want to deny this. But still, the world we live in, unfortunately did not teach most of us solidarity and cooperation. In order for every person to feel welcome within the community, it is important to be aware of ones own boundaries as well as those of others. We want to (learn how to) break down the behavioral patterns associated with our own discriminatory behavior. We want to work towards a new social state in which respecting one’s own and others‘ boundaries is a matter of course. As a community, we can set a good example and advocate for respectful, appreciative interaction with one another. Therefore we have built this website and formulated a guideline which intends to facilitate the access of championship organizations to the topic awareness.

Because we are aware that border violations and assaults unfortunately still happen everywhere. No affected person should feel powerless and left alone!

• In spaces that are characterized by physicality, noise, darkness, confinement and – possibly -intoxication, personal boundaries are unfortunately exceeded more often. This crossing of boundaries usually affects people who are already discriminated against by existing social power relations. Messenger community is mostly cis-male dominated, almost all of us are able-bodied and championships, by definition, are sporting competitions, which further encourages dominant behavior. All of this makes the community a place where different people, especially WTNBIA+ can quickly feel unwelcome. We of course do not want to criticize sexist discrimination only, we want to criticize ALL discrimination and we want to work on this process all together.

• For many people, going out, partying and dancing is part of a good life - everyone wants to have fun and live out their lives. In the messenger community, this mainly happens in the context of championships and alleycats, which are characterized by a high level of physicality and sporting competition. But: what Fun means to individual people differs from person to person, and depends on the specific situation, because personal limits are subjective. With this concept we want to work towards a new social state in which respecting one's own and others' boundaries is a matter of course. As a community, we can set a good example and advocate for respectful, appreciative interaction with one another.

• Especially in spaces that are characterized by physicality, noise, darkness, confinement and possibly intoxication. personal boundaries are unfortunately exceeded more often. This crossing of boundaries usually affects people who are already discriminated against by existing social power relations, for example because of skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or because they are not able-bodied. People affected often leave events after such negative experiences, which further manifests the existing discriminatory conditions. In order to prevent this, it is important that all participants are able to know their boundaries as best as possible and respect them as well as those of others, thus be as aware as possible.

• The messenger community is still very cis-male dominated: Only 10-20% (rising tendency) of the participants of the messenger companies we know have a strong surplus of cis-male riders. In our experience, it is not unusual that there are only few or even none WTNBIA+ messengers or people, participate in alleycats in some cities. We highlight this because spaces with an excessively high amount of cis-male people can be intimidating, or in general, uncomfortable for many people (of all genders). In addition, most of our events are, by definition, “sporting competitions”, which further encourages dominant and alpha/macho behavior. All of this makes the messenger community a place where different people, especially WTNBIA+ can quickly feel unwelcome. But of course we do not just want to criticize sexist discrimination, we want to criticize ALL discrimination and (learn to) break down the behavioral patterns associated with it. For this purpose we have formulated a guideline that intends to facilitate the access of organizations to the topic awareness in order to establish stable awareness structures and promote the awareness of all participants.