Sensitisation
For a brief description of the entry see: Development of Social Solidarity as a Premise
The basis of sensitisation is cognition and knowing
The best idea is to develop venues, places with the settlements invited into the partnership and to fill these venues with programmes that are equally attractive for the local middle-class and the more disadvantaged strata. However, it is not possible to develop these in the lack of intensive dialogue with the more sensitive civil communities (NGOs) and, within that, without a kind of spiritual and intellectual preparation specifically tailored to local needs.
The purpose of sensitisation is to make the parties open to each other, bringing them closer to each other this way, and also help the parties recognise their stereotypes and prejudices, make them be aware of and handle these stereotypes and prejudices in everyday situations. In the present project, it is the task of the expert(s) participating in the community and institutional development processes to initiate partnership with the target groups of equal opportunities.
The initiator shall assess who the affected parties are in the community and institution development process. It is especially important to start the creation of openness with strengthening the awareness of the experts participating in the process. When accessing the group of affected parties, we have to think over with due care how we intend to involve the decision-makers of the settlement into the sensitisation process. We can establish the openness of each party through simple conversations, meetings targeting self-presentation, trainings, and the different methods of community development, but – in this regard – the best and number-one method is involvement.
There are special sensitisation trainings focusing on this subject. These trainings help us to bring the issue of ‘equal opportunities’ closer to the experts working in the project, which, in addition to recognising the issue and the cause, means that the participants can see, through tasks focusing on their own experiences, what the feeling of refusal, non-acceptance, stigmatisation and exclusion is like. These trainings do not specify unrealistic objectives, in other words, they cannot eliminate the prejudices of the participants. The purpose is to become more sensitive to and much more aware of the phenomena of prejudice.
Practices, experiences
It is possible, that the distance among the inhabitants of the settlement is so big that it would be too early to invite the disadvantaged persons directly into the institution. According to the experiences, some relaxed, informal meetings have to take place before targeted contacting, if necessary, at the place of residence of the disadvantaged persons. Following the informal meetings – targeted fieldwork helps a lot – the objective is to establish confidence-based relations, mentioned several times, which shall be well prepared within the institutional frameworks.
In order to achieve that both the staff of the institution(s) and the disadvantaged individuals or communities specified as target groups become more open to each other, we have to create and generate situations where they can become familiar with each other indirectly, should the case be, so that the expectations stemming from necessity do not cause stress.
It is possible to generate meetings and discussions even at cultural events, or workshops targeting to know each other, namely at occasions when the emphasis is not specifically on the subject of the occasion but on dialogues consciously built into the event. However, the essence of a good method is that the event inviting the target group for self-presentation is planned together with them and we should let them make the situation ‘comfortable’ for them along their ideas. This is how they feel that the event is theirs and this is how they will become motivated to enter, join the institution.
According to the experiences, the smaller the social and geographical distance is, the more difficult the approach between/among the different groups and communities is. Often enough we express more solidarity to downtrodden people living in other, distant villages than with those who live in our neighbourhood. The face of poverty is many-fold, and its vicinity is often scaring. A lot of time has to pass by before we can overcome these obstacles, and a number of stories promoting approach and building confidence have to happen before people get to know each other.
This article based on the following document: