Throughout April and May 2016, members of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association have provided anti-racism trainings to prison workers and volunteers working with inmates during special workshops in Poland, Greece, and Hungary.
The trainings were organized in frames of the innovative educational project E.U.R.O.P.E. (European Union Rapprochement for Offenders and Pupils Education). Supported by the European Commission, the project aims to promote European and civic values among inmates, ex-convicts and socially marginalized youth in cooperation with officials and volunteers. The international project is managed by Collegium Civitas in Warsaw with the participation of the Slawek Foundation (Poland) as well as Greek and Hungarian NGOs. The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has provided a series of anti-racism presentations and workshops on hate speech and hate crime which have been met with big interest among the participants. The challenges of cultural diversity among the prison population and the role of sports in fostering intercultural understanding were discussed, among others. The seminar in Warsaw was joined by Jeremy Jones, a prominent Jewish community leader in Australia who spoke about multiculturalism, the issue of refugees, and his Rugby League team as a tool of integration.
The trainings in Warsaw took place on 7-10 April, followed by meetings in Athens (18-21 April) and Budapest (7-10 May). The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association was represented by Stanislaw Czerczak, Anna Tatar, and Maria Thun-Janowska. Future trainings and publications of educational materials are currently planned in frames of the E.U.R.O.P.E. project.
The participation in the international prison project reflects the ongoing commitment of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association to the work on the international level. Other activities of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ team have included a presentation on the far right in Eastern Europe at the conference held by the Ewangelische Akademie zu Berlin on 2 May and a contribution to the specialist meeting on antisemitism hosted in Strasbourg on 3 May by the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner (and a longtime friend of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association) Nils Muiznieks. Later this month, ‘NEVER AGAIN’ will be represented at the annual trans-Atlantic seminar on the far right in Montgomery, Alabama, co-organized by the US-based Southern Poverty Law Centre and the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung.
The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an anti-racist educational and monitoring organization established in Poland in 1996.
