"The project is gay? Rejected."
23/10/2006
By
Lisette Kampus, Campaign Against Homophobia
European Commission has a very nice iniciative which is ment for facilitating the cooperation between youth (18-25) in Europe, it is called the European Youth Programme. Youth Programme should be equally opened for all youth groups for various projects, but the Polish situation shows that it is not always the case.
In the European Youth Programme, there are 5 different actions under which young people or youth-workers can come up with a nice variety of activities. One of the actions is the European Voluntary Service (EVS) that gives a young person to spend up to 12 months in another country working as a volunteer for the project she/he has chosen. The decisions over projects and national guidelines of the programme are made by National Agencies which are in every member state of EU and other programme countries. This means that decisions are made locally, although, they should be in accordance with the general programme guidelines.
Polish LGBT organization Campaign Against Homophobia applied for the 1-st of June deadline with the project of sending organization EVS with the aim to send a volunteer to a hosting organization in Sweden for one year. Not to mention the fact that the decision of our project was severely delayed (and in case of positive answer, the project should have started on September 1-st), we got the answer on September 26-th, but also the content of the decision was rather suprising. Here's the decision of the Polish National Agency's selection committee:
"I would like to inform that today [26.09.06] the Selection Commitee decided to reject the project nr PL-21-433-2006-R3 submitted by Campaign Against Homophobia under Action 2 Youth Programme: European Volountary Service.
Majority of members of the Selection Committee stated that project of Campaign is against the policy of raising children and youth, which is implemented by the Ministry. The policy of Ministry does not support actions that aim to propagate homosexual behaviour and such attitude among young people. Also, the role of Ministry is not to support cooperation of homosexuals organizations."
In other words, the project was... gay!
Now, the rejection is surely no suprise (after all, the Youth Programme IS under the governance of Ministry of Education and the minister is a well-known homophobe Roman Giertych), but what is in fact suprising, is that for the first time the Ministry is making so secret of its homophobia and the fact that they in principle do not support LGBT organizations.
What next? We have already written several mails to the Commission asking what is their stand on the constant problems with the Youth Programme in Poland. Naturally, the Commission can only give careful, politically correct answers, but in this case, we are really hoping that there will be some measures taken as this decision of Polish Ministry of Education is, in fact, a clear violation of Youth Programme guidelines.
In the European Youth Programme, there are 5 different actions under which young people or youth-workers can come up with a nice variety of activities. One of the actions is the European Voluntary Service (EVS) that gives a young person to spend up to 12 months in another country working as a volunteer for the project she/he has chosen. The decisions over projects and national guidelines of the programme are made by National Agencies which are in every member state of EU and other programme countries. This means that decisions are made locally, although, they should be in accordance with the general programme guidelines.
Polish LGBT organization Campaign Against Homophobia applied for the 1-st of June deadline with the project of sending organization EVS with the aim to send a volunteer to a hosting organization in Sweden for one year. Not to mention the fact that the decision of our project was severely delayed (and in case of positive answer, the project should have started on September 1-st), we got the answer on September 26-th, but also the content of the decision was rather suprising. Here's the decision of the Polish National Agency's selection committee:
"I would like to inform that today [26.09.06] the Selection Commitee decided to reject the project nr PL-21-433-2006-R3 submitted by Campaign Against Homophobia under Action 2 Youth Programme: European Volountary Service.
Majority of members of the Selection Committee stated that project of Campaign is against the policy of raising children and youth, which is implemented by the Ministry. The policy of Ministry does not support actions that aim to propagate homosexual behaviour and such attitude among young people. Also, the role of Ministry is not to support cooperation of homosexuals organizations."
In other words, the project was... gay!
Now, the rejection is surely no suprise (after all, the Youth Programme IS under the governance of Ministry of Education and the minister is a well-known homophobe Roman Giertych), but what is in fact suprising, is that for the first time the Ministry is making so secret of its homophobia and the fact that they in principle do not support LGBT organizations.
What next? We have already written several mails to the Commission asking what is their stand on the constant problems with the Youth Programme in Poland. Naturally, the Commission can only give careful, politically correct answers, but in this case, we are really hoping that there will be some measures taken as this decision of Polish Ministry of Education is, in fact, a clear violation of Youth Programme guidelines.
