Exelixis, the
youth leadership project seek to work on a joint venture
to educate, inspire and politically empower minority
ethnic communities & europeans in Greece. Our aims are to:
·
Inspire and
empower BME communities to believe that through political
and civic engagement we can challenge
racism and make a positive contribution
·
Hold back
mainstream political parties from demonising BME
communities through a pernicious immigration debate
·
Encourage main
stream parties and their politicians to talk about BME
communities in their countries in a positive way
·
Put tackling
race equality back on the political agenda
Our objectives
are to:
·
politically and
civically educate 250,000 BME
individuals about the benefits of civic
engagement
·
directly
register 4000 individuals to vote and encourage them to do
so.20,000 indirectly
·
hold political
hustings meetings inviting main stream political parties
to resist the pernicious anti-immigrant rhetoric
In Greece, and in
part because of austerity measures two opposing dynamics
are occurring:
1.
Main stream
political parties are adopting the rhetoric of the Far
right and other anti-immigration parties. This shift to
the political Right has meant that the debate about
austerity quickly descends into blaming the immigrants for
a nations ills.
2.
Black,
roma and
minority ethnic communities are simply not engaging. Many
believe what is the point of engaging in a political
environment in which we are perceived as the enemy.
Background
In
Greece, among the basic
ingredients of the current fiscal and social crisis, one
can encounter clientelism, corruption and cynicism on
behalf of the citizens towards the politicians, lack of
citizen’s conscience. All these characteristic attitudes
ended up in a lack of interest on behalf of a major part
of the Greek society for major public issues, and a lack
of active participation, particularly from Minority
communities.
At
the same time we have witnessed
a shocking rise of extreme political and social attitudes
(e.g) extreme right parties as Golden Dawn, racism). Many
minorities in Greece, not only fear for their own
safety, but also have little or no confidence with the
political elite to address the concerns of discrimination
and inequality.
Outreach and
Activities
Design and
produce leaflets.
Operation Black
Vote and Exelixis will produce sets of leaflets. The first
will outline the challenges that our communities face:
high unemployment, ‘Stop and Search’, etc, whilst the
other side will outline how we challenge these
inequalities through of civic and political participation.
These leaflets with disseminated along with voter
registration forms.
Voter
registration and turnout events
We will undertake
10 voter registration and voter
turnout meetings.
In the early part
of the campaign they focus mainly on voter registration
and understanding the political process. However, as we
get closer to the European and local elections these
meetings may take the form of political husting meetings
which will hold the politicians some accountability.
We will undertake
10 events in three areas,
covering cities such as Athens,
Salonica, Xania.
On average we expect 100 people to attend each meeting.
5 gyspy and
traveller meetings
5 African and
Caribbean meetings
5 Asian meetings
5 Student
meetings, in predominantly BME areas
At the Husting’s
meetings we will invite main stream
Party political candidates to answer question to a BME
audience
Activities of
Exelixis
Exelixis will
undertake events in 4 areas, Athens, Salonica, Patra , creta, we expect to
attend more than 100 people.
Europeans,
Bulgarian, Romanian, polish, Roma Muslims African We
will invite ; polical anylist and Academic persons
including antidiscrimination organizations.
Dissemination
of information
As well as the
direct activities OBV and Exelixis Will engage in a
information dissemination campaign. This element of the
campaign seeks to use both our extended networks, media
outlets including social media.
OBV has a network
of 15,000 organisations it will ask to disseminate
information about local and EU elections and the need to
register to vote.
Our media
strategy in Greece
we
have a partnership with Foreign journalists association of
Greece
and many Radio & tv stations including
community press electronic and printed, as well we have a
relationship with immigration union of
Greece
that is a platform of foreign communities in Greece.