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Description
The development of social processes tolerating discriminatory attitudes and manifestation of prejudices and hate speech leads to violations of human rights in Bulgaria. It is alarming that intolerance in young people towards the ones who are different is manifested more and more often not only verbally but also through violence. With this project we expect to achieve a positive change of the trends of violation of human rights, display of intolerance, discrimination and use of hate speech among young people and school students. The project envisages activities to raise the awareness of young people/school students, teachers and the media about human rights followed by youth campaigns, debates and social media campaigns carried out based on the knowledge acquired. The development and testing of a pilot programme for tolerance, anti-discrimination and human rights will help boost the sensitivity of young people to the above topics and the programme will be piloted by teachers who have been trained to work with it. In the short term, the project will contribute to placing the subject of human rights in the centre of public attention and will thus encourage the carrying out of preventive actions in this respect. In the long term the project will enable the creation of an informal network of young people who can work together to carry out activities, which is particularly valuable for settlements without youth NGOs and clubs. The development and the piloting of the programme titled Tolerance, Anti-discrimination and Human Rights will help teachers use and integrate it in their teaching. The project will be implemented in partnership with the National Association of Resource Teachers (NART), which will help inform and actively involve teachers from across the country. Experts with experience in human rights and organization of national campaigns will support the project activities. Pedagogical expertise will be also provided for the development of the programme.
Summary of project results
The main goal of the project is to achieve a positive change in relation to the trends of human rights violations, manifestation of intolerance, discrimination and use of hate speech among young people and students.
The project addresses problems such as the fact that Bulgaria is one of the 10 countries in the European Union with the most frequent violations of the European Convention on Human Rights and that, among young people, the feeling of intolerance towards others is increasingly expressed not only verbally, but also through violence.
The main results of the project include:
• 75 people trained under the "Embracing Diversity" program
• 20 teachers trained to use the "Tolerance, Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights" program developed within the project
• 10 schools involved in pilot testing of the program
• 10 realized youth campaigns on human rights protection
• Information on the topic reached 10,000 people
The project increased the capacity of teachers to work with the topics of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the capacity of the involved media and the knowledge and activity of young people from 10 schools.The inclusion of well-known people in the project to motivate and inspire students to defend their rights - like a Roma actress and the mayor of the town of Levski, as well as the use of educational board games to engage students can be considered a good practice.