On September 18 – 19, 2018 Ignas Rėkašius – LGL‘s Project Manager – took part in the training on campaigning as part of the international project “Call It Hate: Raising Awareness of Anti-LGBT Hate Crime“, held in a newly established LGBTI+ community center Rainbow Hub in Sofia, Bulgaria.

During the two-day training, the participants discussed previously held campaigns and analyzed its effectiveness with a view on building their own future outreach campaigns aimed at raising awareness about the negative impact of anti-LGBT hate crime and empowering victims to report.

The training was lead by a Senior Campaign and Programmes Officer Laura Piazza from ILGA-Europe during which a specific attention was paid in the ways of framing the message of the campaign in order to avoid the secondary victimization. Furthermore, the training participants were also introduced on the means of finding the target audience for the campaign and cost-effective ways to approach them.

The “Call It Hate“ project involves 10 partnership countries, namely Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Ireland, Slovenia, Italy, Belgium, United Kingdom, Croatia and Hungary. As part of it, different outreach and awareness raising campaigns will be held in each country, aimed at building trust between victims of anti-LGBT hate crime and law enforcement officers.

The project “Call It Hate“ is funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union. It will be implemented in the period between January, 2018 and December, 2019. The Grant Agreement No. JUST-REC-DISC-AG-2016-04-764731.