Roundtable 1 at our Final Conference
The Up4Diversity Final Conference took place in the KU Leuven facilities in Brussels on July 5. The following posts will summarise the main ideas from the diverse spaces that were organised, but we encourage you to check the original recordings of the conference once they are published on our YouTube channel.
Roundtable 1 gave an initial understanding of the Up4Diversity project: the Upstander approach, its latests outcomes and results.
First, Dr. Oriol Rios, professor at URV and coordinator of the project, introduced the Up4Diversity project and explained what the upstander approach is. This project was born from the high rates of LGBTIphobic violence and bullying in Europe, especially towards youth. Previous research on violence prevention had found successful educational actions that have shown impact in reducing and preventing violence, and URV prepared a project proposal thanks to the REC programme funds.
Dr. Rios presented how Up4Diversity aims at addressing it from an evidence-based approach, following the Communicative methodology that previous projects and research on this subject has proven successful towards finding transformative solutions and promoting social impact. He made explicit the real commitment of the project Consortium towards victims and institutions to be of real help with the work carried out. Dr. Rios took the opportunity to introduce the upstander approach so that any attendee could have a basic understanding of the concept from a clear and scientific position. Showing evidence of this approach contributed to acquire this evidence-based mindset towards educational practice from all youth professionals and workers.
Second, Dries de Smet introduced the Up4Diversity Network of professionals and people who work with youth. Dries is coordinator of the PURPLE campaign in Flanders, which spread the LGBT+ solidarity campaign and educational packages towards 255 schools in Flanders for IDAHOT on May 17th, reaching around 110,000 students. As an active member of the Up4Diversity network, he explained its impacts on his work, where he has included the Upstander approach thanks to his participation in this project.
Last in this roundtable, Raf D'haese made his intervention. Raf is a policy advisor on diversity and inclusion at KU Leuven and has been an active member of the Advisory Committee (AC) of the project, which he explained along with its impact in improving the project to meet its goals. The AC has helped improve the outcomes of the project, focusing on the relevance, inclusiveness, and ease of use of the project's outputs.
