Open your eyes: No room for discrimination! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open your eyes: No room for discrimination!

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The aim of our project was to sensitise young people and youth workers to the issue of discrimination and to jointly test methods with which this issue can be demonstrated and communicated. With our project, we wanted to promote equal treatment and social inclusion of young people, including those with a migration background, and strengthen cooperation with our partner organisations. We also wanted to support professionals and volunteers of our organisations in developing intercultural, social and project management skills and values such as respect for human dignity, tolerance and solidarity.

The project was implemented by the following organisations: VRJD JunOst LV Bayern e.V. (Germany), ARTILT-D (Latvia), Modern Theatre Shatz (Czech Republic) and Consultation Centre for Contemporary International Practices and Their Implementation in Law Human Constanta (Belarus). The participants of the project were volunteers and professionals from our organisations on the one hand, and the general public, including young people and those interested in the topic of anti-discrimination, on the other.

The project took place from 01.03.2019 to 31.12.2020 and consisted of four phases:
– Transnational preparatory meeting in Prague (12.4-15.4.2019). At this meeting, project coordinators (8 people in total) discussed the organisational process and content-related aspects of the project. As a result of the preparatory meeting, the course of the project was concretised, the responsibilities of the coordinators were defined, the contents of the internal partnership agreement were elaborated and the programme for the learning activity was developed.
– Anti-discrimination Academy in Munich and Seeshaupt (01.09-08.09.2019). During this learning activity, volunteers and professionals from our organisations learned creative methods, including shadow play, plastic theatre, creative laboratory, animation and photography, in a practical way and deepened their expertise in the field of human rights, discrimination, project management as well as informal education.
– Regional Activities (01.11.2019-04.03.2020). The knowledge acquired during the learning activity was tested locally in this part of the project: Participants carried out their own actions/projects in their home countries.
– Transnational final meeting via Zoom (23.11.2020). A comprehensive evaluation of the whole project was made, the possibilities of further cooperation were discussed and joint projects were planned.

Within the framework of our partnership, we have succeeded in supporting the exchange of experiences, expertise and examples of good practice on the topic of anti-discrimination at the international level. We have learned a lot from and with each other and plan to organise joint projects and strengthen our cooperation even further. Professionals and volunteers from our organisations are already developing and implementing activities in the civil society sector with the help of the skills and expertise acquired in our project.

Overall, our project results can be presented in figures as follows: Our project activities took place in four countries and eight cities. 40 volunteers from our organisations were able to acquire new competences and methodological knowledge during the learning activity. We were able to reach about 1300 people with our regional projects. Our events have hundreds of mentions on Instagram, Facebook and online media. To present results of the Anti-Discrimination Academy to the public, we held a public event in Munich. As part of the regional projects, more than ten events were held for volunteers of our organisations and general public, a film was made (www.youtube.com/watch?v=2reLmy4rZTw), a website was created (http://noroomfordiscrimination.tilda.ws/eng) and 1000+ photos were taken. We also distributed several t-shirts, notebooks, postcards and stickers with messages about equality and respect to the participants of our activities. All project results are freely accessible and available for a longer period of time. The Google folder “Library of the project ‘Open Your Eyes'”, which contains project results, can be accessed at the following link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zXFntr00lYWHdM10gfnoRtvuUNbfELir?usp=sharing.

We are sure that the combination of human rights issues, creative methods, informal learning and intercultural exchange used in our project can provide unique answers to the challenges of today and tomorrow. This approach can be effectively used in other projects on a larger scale to promote the ideas of equality and anti-discrimination in different contexts.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 67280 Eur

Project Coordinator

Verband der russischsprachigen Jugend in Deutschland JunOst, Landesverband Bayern e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Modern Theatre Shatz
• Consultation Centre for Contemporary International Practices and Their Implementation in Law Human Constanta
• ARTILT-D