"Different Point of View"
Combating discrimination
Completed
mazowieckie
Warszawa
Border Guard Headquarters, Office for Foreigners, Warszawa, Poland
2014-02-03 - 2015-07-31
328 857,03 PLN
294 000,03 PLN
refugees and migrants, uniformed services
Project description
Surveys led by CBOS in 2010 show that Poles have a strong sense of ethnic divisions and as a receiving society usually take intolerant and discriminatory attitudes. Foreigners meet with discriminatory behaviours and statements because of their looks, religion, clothes, poor grasp of Polish language. The attitudes are also common among border guard officers working on the border or in closed centres for foreigners, and conducting checks in the border zone and throughout Poland. The foreigners also complain about poor knowledge of foreign languages among border guard officers. The situation has very negative effects on the procedure of processing applications for refugee status that contain very detailed questions. The aim of the project was to enhance language qualifications of border guard workers, to change their negative attitudes towards foreigners, and to improve their knowledge on the culture of immigrants coming to Poland. The project contributed to change attitudes of border guard officers towards foreigners from discriminatory to one based on respect and understanding. They acquired knowledge on the traditions and the culture of immigrants. The officers also got language competencies that help them to communicate with foreigners coming to Poland. Under the project, 640 hours of language lessons were conducted in Chechen, Georgian and Arab, 20 stationary trainings on multiculturalism were organised and 6 antidiscrimination workshops for border guard officers from all over Poland were conducted. The project benefited 692 border guard officers.
We use the grant for capacity building