Description
The „Youth Building a Civic Romania” project will be managed by the Civic Education Project and Academic Development Foundation (FPECDA). The project identifies and addresses the divide between formal democratic institutions and the informal institutionalization within the Romanian society of discriminatory practices and attitudes. The main objective is to promote human rights by increasing the knowledge, awareness and sensitivity of the public towards general issues such as homophobia, racism, hate speech and sexual harassment. It also aims at developing our organizations capacity to further develop such activities in the future. The expected outcomes of the project are: promoting active citizenship and democratic values, including human rights. The target group is made up of 1340 young people, in the 16 – 25 age group. The partners have been selected based on their contribution to reaching the target group and the academic expertise of their respective members in the area of discrimination and gender issues.
Summary of project results
The „Youth Building a Civic Romania” project has been implemented by the Civic Education Project and Academic Development Foundation (FPECDA). The project identified and adressed the divide between formal democratic institutions and the informal institutionalization within the Romanian society of discriminatory practices and attitudes. The main objective was to promote human rights by increasing the knowledge, awareness and sensitivity of the public towards general issues such as homofobia, racism, hate speech and sexual harassment. It also aimed at increasing the organisation's capacity to further develop such activities in the future. The project addressed 655 direct beneficiaries and 2022 indirect beneficiaries (16-25 years old). The partners involved in the project were ANA Society, National College „Ion Neculce” and the „Nicolae Titulescu University”. The partners (a high-school, an university and an NGO focused on gender studies) have been selected based on their contribution to reaching the target group and the academic expertise of their respective members in the area of discrimination and gender issues. The main result of the project is the change that it produced in the perceptions and, hopefully, in the mentalities of the targeted group of the project, that is the high-school and university students who actively participated in the activities and events of the project. They had the opportunity to experiment, analyse and discuss sensitive issues such as sexual harassment, homophobia, racism, with antidiscrimination experts and, thus, acknowledge and better comprehend the extent of these concepts. The event that had the greatest media coverage was the debate organised in the 10th of March 2015 at the headquarters of the European Commission Representation in Romania. Its subject was "Freedom of expression vs. Hate Speech? Europe and Romania after Charlie Hebdo". The main partner in organising the debate was National Council for Combating Discrimination and the event had a good media coverage (radio, online news) and was transmitted live on European Commission Representation's website.
Summary of bilateral results