CEPOL 99/2018 Fundamental Rights - Management of Diversity - Step 2

Last week the Security Academy of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Austria implemented the CEPOL course 99/2018 “Management of Diversity – Step 2”. The activity took place from the 25 June to 29 June 2018 in the Police Training Centre in Vienna, Austria. The aim of this course was to develop or increase the capacity to acknowledge and accept diversity (knowledge - ratio), to value diversity (attitude - emotion) and to include diversity or deal professionally with diversity related issues (skills – action) in a Law Enforcement context.

The course was attended by 23 CEPOL participants from 19 different EU Member states. As it was designed for a mixed audience, the 23 CEPOL participants were joined by 2 additional participants from FRONTEX. The activity was led by two main trainers who tried to involve the participants as much as possible, by encouraging them to incorporate their personal experiences and show best practices. Results and reflections of group work was put on flipcharts and displayed in the plenary room, thus the progress of the activity was made visible for the participants as well as for the trainers.

The training session on “Cosncious-Conversation for Conscious actions” implemented via four mini workshops was one of the highlights of the course. Four “friends” who belong to so called minority groups with regard to a different ethnical and religious background and or sexual orientation were invited to share their life experience with the participants. These “friends” were seen to have knowledge and experience combined with the confidence and courage to share and engage. One of the participants later stated that “with regard to diversity and the connected discrimination we have still a path to go, although until today I thought that my country is already progressive with regard to this issue … what I learned today is that testimonials are much more interesting than giving lectures and I will find people in my country to testify.”

Another highlight was the study visit to “Dialogue in the dark”. This was about feeling the real “Difference” of what it means to have a disability with all their senses. Due to their newly gained experience the participants started to empathize with people in different life situation of life challenges and came to the conclusion that “perception is always difficult when you are not in it.”

Furthermore, the participants were grateful for the chance to expand their professional network and started to make use of professional platforms to stay in contact and further exchange experience.