Description
"Participation in Decision Making - Reducing School Violence in Cluj-Napoca" is a PATRIR project, designed in collaboration with the Norwegian Peace Council and the Nansen Dialogue Center from Serbia. Through this project, we aim to empower a multi-sectoral group of active citizens from Cluj-Napoca, whom together with the project coordinators and the foreign experts, will conduct a comprehensive conflict analysis on the topic of violence in schools, in order to bring improvements to the existing policies that should address it. The multi-sectoral group will be guided to make use of public consultations and dialogue sessions, awareness raising campaigns, create inter-sectoral partnerships and based on an international comparative study on the addressed topic, formulate and put forward 2 policy proposals to the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Cluj County School Inspectorate that will contribute to the prevention and combating of violence in schools from Cluj-Napoca.
Summary of project results
The project’s aim was to mobilize a multi-sectoral action group from Cluj-Napoca in order to elaborate 2 public policies recommendations for the prevention and reduction of school based violence, which would be integrated by the Cluj County School Inspectorate. The project had as its premises data from a report published by the Ministry of Education in Romania, mentioning the fact that the number of acts of violence in Romanian schools had reached a concerning number. Thus, in the 2011/12 school-year 14,313 cases of violent acts were reported, meaning an average of 80 acts of violence per day. The multi-sectoral action group, which was created within the project, was formed by: teachers, students, entrepreneurs, parents, representatives of public authorities and members of civil society organizations in Cluj-Napoca. Its members have been actively engaged in 3 capacity building activities on conflict transformation, advocacy and policy writing. Together with the project team and the partners, they’ve managed to do an analysis about school violence in order to improve the public policies that aim to prevent and reduce it. Also, the members of the action group have been actively engaged in public consultations and awareness raising campaigns which were part of the project’s activities. Furthermore, the action group has elaborated policy change recommendations based on a comparative international study about school-based violence and forwarded them to Cluj-Napoca City Hall and the Cluj County School Inspectorate, meant to prevent and reduce violence in school from Cluj-Napoca. Both Norwegian and Serbian partners were involved in drafting the study regarding the school violence, in the 2 national conferences organized within the project and in developing the policy writing instruments. The outcomes of this project are not yet visible in numbers, as the policy recommendations will only come into power with the school year 2016/17. However, the action group created is able to continue the dialogue meetings started with the project, and other project results like the short video about school violence can be further used by teachers -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhgR8L9l75g.
Summary of bilateral results
The main achievements of the bilateral partnership between PATRIR and the Norwegian Peace Council are the contributions brought to the project’s results by the know-how and knowledge provided by NPC’s expert, which was involved in most of the project’s stages. The training on policy writing for the action group’s members and the contribution to the project’s comparative report on violence in schools from Cluj-Napoca, Oslo and Belgrade were the main contributions. Also, being in contact throughout the project’s implementation period with the representative of NPC has given the beneficiary a constant feedback about how the project’s activities and are going from the partners’ perspective. Last, but not least, given that PATRIR had a long history of working together with NPC, this project has contributed to further strengthening the relations and synergies between the 2 organizations and its members, which can lead to future joint work.