BEST: International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

March 21st is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Every year, young people who participate in the BEST project (Solidarność. Podaj dalej!), send postcards with messages of solidarity and fraternity to randomly chosen strangers and hope to receive a response.

The BEST project is run internationally, and therefore messages of solidarity are sent from Spain, Croatia, Italy, France, Slovenia and Poland. The scale of the project grows – in the previous edition of the project over 100 000 postcards were sent. We hope to beat the record this year!

What did the students write this year? The cards’ patterns can be found here and please see the examples of students’ messages below:

There are many countries in which people want to escape them because of the problems of them, like war or poverty. Even in countries that don’t have problems like that many people are not completely free. There are a lot of cases in which people are victims of violence at home or are bullied at school, which separate them from their freedom. We should help these people in all ways we can. (Józek, 16 years old)

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Everyone benefits from gender equality. It helps prevent violence against women and girls and makes our communities safer and healthier. (…) Gender inequality affects everyone, including men. Stereotypes or ‘rules’ about how women and men, girls and boys begin in childhood and follow us through to adulthood. As women, we should always support each other. No matter where we come from or what faith we believe in. As a society, we can and must do better. How do you feel about it? (Ola, 16 years old)

Due to the pandemic of COVID-19, sending the postcards was much more difficult than in the previous editions. During distance learning students weren’t able to collect the postcards physically. They were obliged to write their messages online and send them to their teachers – who printed the messages and stuck them onto the postcards, and next – sent them all over Europe.

We are immensely proud of all the teachers and educators who managed to organize the activities of the BEST project!

Below you can find the “postcards operation” in Complex of School of Communication in Poznań (Zespół Szkół Komunikacji im. Hipolita Cegielskiego w Poznaniu):

BEST project (Solidarność. Podaj dalej!) is co-financed by the European Union as a part of the Erasmus + programme, in cooperation with: La Ligue de l’enseignement – France, Fundacion CIVES – Spain, CMS, Center for Peace Studies – Croatia, Humanitas – Slovenia, ARCI – Italy.