The Minority Report developed by the Local Knowledge Foundation in collaboration with New Media Research Centre of Collegium Civitas in the spring of 2011 has revealed 85,000 incidence of racism, homophobia and xenophobia. Apparently, most spontaneous online statements made by Poles about minorities constitute hate speech. The Nowy Sącz area has two minorities: the Roma and the Lemko. Much of the hate speech is directed against the two groups. Research confirms that verbal aggression is one of the biggest issues in schools. Strangely enough, young people rarely recognise their behaviour as aggressive and have limited ability to empathise with the victims.
The objective of the project was to educate young people about the cultural diversity of the region with a view to preventing hate speech against the local minorities.
As a result of the project, 50 students have learned about the culture of local minorities and have used ways of recognising and counteracting hate speech in awareness campaigns against youth cyber-violence.
The project delivered workshops for 50 youth leaders. Young people conducted 10 awareness campaigns about the mechanism and impacts of intolerance and made 10 interventions against intolerance and hate speech incidents. An online portal has been launched that provides coverage of the project and there have been 27 publications in local media and 22 online publications on lepiejzrozumiec.pl.
Project beneficiaries include students and teachers in middle schools in County Nowy.
The Partner, Hordaland County Council, Bergen, shared its experience and best practice in counteracting intolerance, discrimination and hate speech. The Partner was consulted online about the activities planned by youth in their campaigns. Innovative youth engagement techniques were applied based on the Partner's experience.