Discrimination towards LGBTQI+ people has been one of the most widely practiced acts of hate throughout human history. Despite the increase of tolerance and the applied new EU policies that we have observed during the last decades, there is still a long way to go in the path of progress and full acceptance. Unfortunately, sexual orientation and gender identity have been the second and third most commonly indicated grounds for discrimination in the EU. This phenomenon is even more intense within middle and high school environments where the spontaneous character of most teenagers can become the cause for incidents as bullying, hate speech and even physical violence towards their LGBTQI+ classmates. In even more extreme cases, acts of discrimination, especially lectic ones, can also be initiated by teaching and other school stuff. The results of such discrimination can be detrimental for the victims since LGBTQI+ youth display a much greater percentage of depression and suicidal tendencies than the norm in the respective age group. The amelioration of verbal expressions’ choices regarding sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in everyday life and the social media is the main focus of the Inclusion Vocabulary project. Its main target is to eliminate discriminatory words and expressions from the environment of LGBTQI+ students and teachers, and replace them with ones that express respect and acceptance allowing growth and personal potential achievement. Therefore, its main target groups are educators, students, parents and school stuff and its main objectives are: To create positive and inclusive environments in schools for all students regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. To accumulate teaching resources and create lesson plans that teach diversity and respect and include examples of SOGI topics allowing learning to reflect the SOGI diversity in students' lives, families and society. To extricate any prejudiced or discriminatory words or behaviours from the vocabulary of teachers and students. To train teachers, educators and high school students on how to foster their SOGI inclusive, social and communication skills through digital technology (videos, dedicated platform, website). To provide parents of students who identify themselves as LGBTQI+ with digital resources for communicating with their children in a respectful and accepting manner. To sensitize and make teachers more receptive on those issues, not only towards their students but also towards colleagues and other members of society who identify as LGBTQI+. To achieve all these, 3 outputs will be created 1) A New Vocabulary Handbook which will, in a dictionary manner, contain inclusive and accepting terminology regarding sexual orientation and gender identity topics. This Handbook will give directions relating to everyday language use towards and about LGBTQI+ students, to persons that interact with them daily, hence their teachers, classmates and parents. 2) The New Vocabulary training course for teachers, which will guide educators through the right implementation of the aforementioned Handbook, while at the same time giving them special pedagogical advice regarding bullying towards and their interaction with LGBTQI+ students, in order to make them feel included and respected within class. 3) The New Vocabulary video stories online platform which, besides information material on the project, will contain short videos, created by students, that focus on the subject of linguistic discrimination towards sexual orientation among students. To create these videos, students will team up, leaded by an assigned educator, from schools participating in the project. Videos uploaded on the platform will take part in a Video Contest where the platform users will vote on their favorite videos. The winner will be announced during a special event in Porto where all the finalists will be present, in a big celebration of acceptance and inclusion. The partnership consists of 8 organizations coming from 6 EU countries, that have a long history and experience on the field of human rights, online education and european project materialization. Each one of them will organize a promotional event in its country where there will be participants like students, teachers and administrative staff from the participating schools, linguists, staff of the project, representatives of LGBTQI+ organizations and, of course, parents of the students. For reaching an audience as wide as possible, all generated material will be translated into all the participating countries languages, plus English, and it will be available for free for any person that may be interested, in downloadable form.
Main objectives of the project: - Fighting discrimination, inequalities, hate speech and bullying due to sexual orientation and gender identity; - Creating positive and inclusive environments in schools for everyone regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity; - Accumulating teaching resources and creating lesson plans based on respect to diversity, including examples of SOGI topics to reflect the SOGI diversity in students’ lives, families and society; - Extricating any prejudiced or discriminatory words or behaviours from teachers and students’ vocabulary; - Training teachers, educators and high school students on how to foster their SOGI inclusive, social and communication skills through digital technology (videos, dedicated platform, website); - Providing parents of students who identify themselves as LGBTQI+ with digital resources for communicating with their children in a respectful and accepting manner; - Sensitizing and making teachers more receptive to those issues; - Fostering the inclusion not only of students but also of colleagues and other members of society who identify as LGBTQI+.
According to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The prohibition of discrimination and the protection of human rights are important elements of the EU legal order. However, discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons persists throughout the EU, taking various forms including verbal abuse and physical violence. Inequalities, hate speech and bullying due to sexual orientation and gender identity remain an active problem in European Schools. It is considered that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is becoming more widespread: sexual orientation and gender identity are respectively the second and the third most commonly indicated grounds for discrimination. The project “INCLUSION VOCABULARY – Creating a new Inclusion Vocabulary to foster acceptance of sexual orientation among teachers and students in high schools” (2020-1-PTO1-KA201-078604) aimed to undertake various important actions against discrimination and towards the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people. These actions targeted school communities and intended to involve everyone in this cause, namely students, teachers and parents so that everyone feels safe and included.