The project “Preventing discrimination in the regions of Poland” was launched in March 2014 and responded to the need to provide the regional governmental administration with the tools and knowledge on how to implement the effective antidiscrimination policy. It aimed at  introducing the important changes to the system in an area of preventing and combating gender based discrimination.

The project was implemented in 4 administrative regions of Poland (voivodeships) and it was run under the patronage of the Governmental Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment.

Project’s goals:

A. On a regional level:

• Developing recommendations for the gender based antidiscrimination policies in the frame of regional strategic documents and the National Action Program for Equal Treatment. The recommendations will address the concrete, important problems for a specific region (e.g. opening a center for women victims of violence, organizing job mentoring for women +50)
• Providing the target group with the tools for:
  • analyzing the regional strategic documents from the gender perspective
  • monitoring and documenting the acts of gender based discrimination in the public and non-public areas, especially focusing on all sorts of media.
• Strengthening a cooperation between the regional plenipotentiaries, NGOs and other actors of civil society to develop the regional plans for antidiscrimination activities.
• Developing a cooperation between the regional plenipotentiaries and the civil servants from different departments e.g. Social Policy Department, Legal Department, Heath Department etc. to work together for effective implementation of antidiscrimination policy.
• Information and articles in the local newspapers about the antidiscrimination policy and actions taken by the plenipotentiaries.
• Initiating a cooperation between the Plenipotentiaries for Equal Treatment from 4 voivodeships in the areas of social, economic and political life.

B. Systemic changes:

• Developing and testing the model of cooperation between the regional plenipotentiaries and civil servants in 4 voivodeships in the area of formulation and implementation of regional antidiscrimination policies.
• Publication which documents the project (its methodology, actions and results) in a friendly, easy to understand way in the area of preventing and combating gender based discrimination.
• Contributing to the systemic solutions for effective prevention of gender based discrimination as well as implementation of the National Action Program for Equal Treatment on a regional level.

C. Long-term goal:

Enhancement of social awareness of discrimination issue and improvement in life’s quality of the groups who are discriminated in Poland.

Project’s actions:

• Project’s opening conference.
• Selection of 4 voivodeships where the project will be implemented.
• Consultations for the Regional Plenipotentiaries for Equal Treatment and the civil servants.
• Workshop for the plenipotentiaries and civil servants to exchange the experiences.
• Publication which promotes the developed „model” of actions on a regional level.
• Project’s final conference.

The program of consultations consists of:

• analyzing of the regional strategic documents from a perspective of gender based discrimination.
• choosing the areas and identifying the manifestations of gender based discrimination in a voivodeship.
• methods of monitoring, documenting and reacting to the acts of discrimination in all sorts of media (hate speech).
• developing the action plans on how to prevent and eliminate the identified manifestations of discrimination.
• consultations with local actors of civil society.
• presenting the developed recommendations to the regional governor (voivode) and to the chief executive officers of the departments responsible for regional policy in the specific areas.

Project’s partners and patronage:

The project was run by KARAT Coalition in cooperation with the Polish Society of Anti-Discrimination Law and Norwegian organization KUN Center for Gender Equality.

The project is run under an umbrella of the Governmental Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment.

Donor:

The project is implemented in a frame of the program “Citizens for Democracy” funded by EEA Grants.