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Description
In Romania, over the last 4 years there has been a worrying increase in intolerance, homophobia and transphobia in society, manifested by an increase in hate speech towards the LGBTQI+ community. The project aims to increase the capacity of organisations working with young people and future professionals in fields such as justice (lawyers), health (psychologists, gynaecologists, infectious disease doctors, family doctors and endocrinologists), etc.), education and social work, to deal with patients, students, volunteers, members, beneficiaries, clients belonging to the LGBTQI+ community.
Several information and training sessions will be organised within the project. During the workshops, the more than 200 participants will have the opportunity to discuss and deepen topics such as: basic information about LGBTQI+ issues, history of the queer community in Romania, general information on preventing and combating discrimination, recognizing and addressing hate speech, how to deal with bullying, organizing events to ensure a safe space for the community, information and support for working with the trans and non-binary community. The aim of the workshops is to address homophobia, transphobia. The project will also organize 3 awareness raising campaigns for the general public in Timisoara about human rights, with a focus on the LGBTQI+ community, inclusive communication and anti-bullying in schools and/or universities. The beneficiaries of the project are on the one hand local organizations working with young people in Timisoara, on the other hand LGBTQI+ young people under 30 years old in Timisoara.
Summary of project results
Education on sexual orientation and gender identity, physical and emotional safety, is the responsibility of everyone, not just LGBTQIA+ organizations. Identity Association can together as actors of civil society educate others and ourselves, and consider that they tackled these things directly within this project. Association started the project by educating and working together with student organizations and any organization that has young people as volunteers, through informational resources and exercises so that they too can become safe spaces. Were offered workshops and trainings to psychology, medicine and law students to cover gaps in the university curricula or correct it where and when it was outdated, or even full with homophobic and transphobic information. The participants of these sessions passed on the information on to collaborators and opened new opportunities for for us - some took place during the implementation of the project, such as our presence in the WSU and ISWinT projects, others are to be implemented - the courses held at the Faculty of Sociology, collaboration with CJRAE Timis and Resita Voluntary Center. Another result is the guide for HoReCa locations that brings with it an increased degree of understanding and awareness on the prevention of homophobic and transphobic attitudes in private spaces but with an open public regime. For the first time in Romania, organization created pilot research that compares the degree of safety that the LGBTQIA+ community feels in social spaces by analysing microagressions. This research was of such interest for an organization from Norway with which Association collaborated on another project and which thus actively participated in the conference to present the research, together with representatives of the Norwegian parliament and the Timisoara City Hall. This project gave us the opportunity to talk about safety and microaggressions and (un)safe spaces at the national level for youth under 18 (129 people) and international students (43 people).