The activities in the project “Stop discrimination of persons with disabilities” entered the next phase in May and June with the application of the acquired knowledge and the implementation of peer education in the involved primary and secondary schools in Bitola. Trained peer educators gave all planned presentations to their peers in the schools where they study. Anastasia held her presentation at Kliment Ohridski school, Leona and Christian at Elpida Karamandi school, and Marta and Michaela at Kole Kaninski school, as far as elementary schools are concerned. While for the secondary schools, Brankica and Angela conducted their peer educations at Taki Daskalo vocational school, and Ivan and Leona at Jovan Kalauzi medical school.
The focus of all presentations was on discrimination and intolerance as behavior that creates discomfort in communication and understanding of other people. All the exercises and activities that the students shared with their peers were aimed at the listeners putting themselves in the other’s shoes and feeling what it’s like to have some kind of limitation in everyday life. With that, the peer educators enabled the classmates to have a practical experience of what it looks like when you are disabled in something and thus encourage awareness of the diversity that everyone has. In this way, a better understanding of the everyday life of students and other persons with disabilities was enabled. Then there were conversations and discussions about the impressions of the exercises and activities.
The total number of students who were present at these presentations was about 150 students in 6 classes. This is the end of another phase of this project which will continue with sharing of the experiences that the peer educators had during their training, as well as the sharing of a small survey related to these topics.
With the project “Stop the Discrimination of People with Disabilities”, we raise awareness of the existence of discrimination in all spheres of life in our society and indicate the regulations that help to reduce it in the future. The project is supported through small grants from the anti-discrimination program of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation – MCMS, financed by the European Union and implemented by Poraka Nova, in cooperation with YMCA.
The peer-to-peer is a methodology that as an organization we will continue to work on in the next period in several topics of interest to young people such as mental health, and personal, social, and career development of children and young people for which we have already secured support, but more for that in some of the following posts on our website.
Read below to learn more about previous project activities