Description
Homophobia is one of the great challenges that the Romanian educational system that will have to solve in the next years. This challenge proves more difficult as there are currently no monitoring instruments put in place and school-based hate-crimes are not documented in any way. The project aims at creating a complementary set of educational, training and advocacy measures for better fighting the homophobic phenomenon within Romanian high schools. An innovative research on the attitudes and perceptions of high-school students regarding LGBT issues will be conducted. 540 high school students will form educational clubs in 9 high schools, following a semester of anti-discrimination training. They will also manage pro-democratic and inclusive activities within the LGBT History Month 2016. In addition, 54 teachers will be trained to implement the new curricula within the partner high schools and to better respond to homophobic cases.
Summary of project results
The project “It’s time to combat LGBT discrimination in Romanian high schools” started from the need of addressing the issues that LGBT students face in high schools. There is no inclusive information about gender and sexuality in Romanian schools, teachers don't learn how to deal with these issues, students don’t understand what it means to be LGBT and exclude their colleagues that break the norm. In this context, LGBT students don’t have the support they need in order to take part in educational processes without fear of exclusion and violence, and they don’t know what to do if they go through a situation of discrimination or bullying. This project made some important steps in dealing with these issues. Firstly, a research about the situation of LGBT students in Romanian high schools was undertaken and then, practical tools through which teachers from all over Romania can contribute to combating discrimination and bullying of LGBT students were created. Through this project, a dialogue with important stakeholders from the educational field, institutions, schools and teachers was opened. The teachers that became part of the network (which was formed after the 3 training courses) applied in their classrooms a curriculum developed specifically for this project. The high school students started to work with their teachers and to tackle these issues themselves through #laLiceu (#atHighschool) initiatives, becoming promoters of diversity. Essential materials to understand LGBT issues were developed: ABC LGBT - that tackles the understanding of the LGBT thematic, including terminology, stereotypes and context; Homoistorii (Homo-histories)- a book that looks at the Romanian history of this community and a guide for high school students, aimed at informing them how to combat discrimination in their own context. In order to make sure that this information will get to more people, and remain available through the years, an online e-learning platform was created. This project was innovative and necessary: all activities and products developed came to fill in a big gap that existed in the Romanian educational context, when dealing with LGBT issues.
Summary of bilateral results