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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