The purpose of the project is twofold: to "heal" and to "prevent"
discrimination. The project proceeds "from the bottom to the top"
and establishes direct communication between the "bottom" and the
"top." The Helsinki Committee focuses on two areas - one in which
discrimination is directly or indirectly embedded by the system
itself and needs to be "healed," and the other in which
discriminatory attitudes are inherited, conditioned or encouraged
but can be "prevented." The first area of concern includes
institutional personnel catering for social care beneficiaries,
whereas the second encompasses secondary school teachers and
students, i.e. student parliaments. Though methodologically
different, the work in these two areas is complementary by its
effects, i.e. the benefits for two of the most vulnerable and
marginalized groups of population: persons with special needs (and
persons catering for them, actually in the same position as they
are) and the young.
Speaking of the first domain, the project
aims, among other things, at sensitizing professionals and auxiliary
staff of the institutions catering for social care beneficiaries
about practices and system flaws that - either directly or
indirectly - discriminate beneficiaries and are contrary to the
Anti-Discrimination Act and international standards.
One of the project goals in the domain of
secondary school system is to raise awareness of students and their
teachers about covert and overt forms of discrimination manifest in
everyday life, curricula and textbooks.
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