Our Polish and Czech partners visited us for a three-day study tour in Pécs. In the framework of our project “Walk in our shoes”, supported by the International Visegrad Fund, we presented our Hidden City Tor-Tour to our project partners as a best practice.

On a beautiful sunny morning of the meeting, Gergő Berkes the leader of the Hidden City Tor-Tour, and his support partner Zoltán Borsodi gave a walk through the city centre, from a barrier-free perspective. And that afternoon, in our BeFogadó community space we discussed the experiences so far, listened to the Polish and Czech project reports and planned future tasks. Even a tasting of Pécs wines and an accessible visit to Cella Septichora fitted into our programme. 🙂

The study tour was the first step to visiting each other. The People First Association had previously provided an online training to Fundacija Sowelo and EYCB members on how they could create similar sensitizing city-walks. Now they have been further helped by seeing us lead a Hidden City Tor-Tour live. Fortunately, we have enthusiastic partners who not only enjoyed the walk, but also gave us very useful opinions and suggestions for improvement!

In the current phase of the project, partners have developed their individual methodologies to organise their own Hidden City Walks.
We are looking forward to the next study tours in Poznan/Poland in June, and Vrchlabi/Czech Republic in August, to see what the Polish and Czech versions of the Hidden City look like!

Thank you for being here and we’re so glad you enjoyed our city!

“We are still working on improving our city-walk. Monika has joined the
project team! We are very excited to start this collaboration.

Monika is active in supporting people with disabilities and has a lot of
experience in guiding groups. Participating in our project will allow
her to strengthen her competences.

We are actively preparing for the Pécs visit. Together we are
familiarising ourselves with materials and analysing best practices in
order to be able to participate sufficiently in the visit.

We can’t wait :)”

The first version of the common Platform, which presents the project, the International Visegrad Fund and international best practices has been prepared. It also acts as a discussion forum for partners. The Polish and Czech teams will add their ideas to the website developed by the Hungarian partner, and then the joint work on the Platform can start. We plan to make it public and open to all interested parties after the project closes.

The Polish team is almost complete with its own sensitising city walk, but the Czech team has also been formed and is developing contacts with the city government.

We will meet in Pécs in May to present the Hidden City Tor-Tour as a best practice of the Hungarian People First Association. We also agreed on the details of this in the March online meeting.

News from Poland:
The Polish team Fundacja Sowelo started developing our own version of a sensitizing city tour. Our experts designed the route and evaluated the accessibility of the various attractions. Now the tour is in the testing phase.
We are excited about the possibilities and ideas that arise as we work together on the project.

“I never used to care about what was going on behind my back, but while sitting in a wheelchair it has become the most important thing”
“Somehow it never occurred to me that you not only have to go up a ramp, but also down. And it’s scary in a wheelchair”
“I will look at the world in a completely different way after trying the white cane”
A large international team is taking these experiences home with them by trying the People First Association’s Hidden City Tor Tour again. (https://peoplefirst.hu/blog-post/rejtett-varos-tor-tour-a/)

Once again, they will pass on to many people those useful experiences that are not enough to say, they must be lived!

The team, coming from several countries, participated in a conference entitled “Disabilities and abilities framed by context” in the framework of the EDUC project of the University of Pécs/Hungary. At this conference Veronika Pataki, president of People First Association, presented our Accessible Pécs Database (https://peoplefirst.hu/akadalymentes-pecs/) to the international audience. The additional programme of the conference (MICE-Tourism) was the Hidden City Tor-Tour in the evening, led by our vice-president Gergő Berkes in his usual uplifting mood.

This is a fundamental objective for us, to offer our Hidden City Tor Tour as an accompanying professional programme for conferences, meetings and events in the framework of MICE Tourism. This programme on 16. January is a good example of this.

Now the “Walk in Our Shoes” project will be really exciting! 🙂
The third training session held yesterday (05.12.2023) concluded the online training, during which the People First Association prepared the Polish partners Sowelo and the Czech partner EYCB to create a sensitizing city tour similar to the Hidden City Tor-Tour.

In addition to the project coordinators, the online trainings were attended by people working in the future Czech and Polish sensitization projects, people with disabilities, future tour guides and organizers. During the interactive trainings in a good atmosphere, we managed to get to know each other and the project better.

Now the Czech and Polish partners are developing the methodology and variations of their own sensitizing city tour, defining their target groups and marketing methods. In addition to the training, the training material developed by the People First Association will help them with this, in which they can find detailed information, suggestions and experiences.

By February 2024 we will see what great ideas our Czech and very active Polish partners come up with. We’re excited to look forward to it!
Of course, the experts of the People First Association will mentor the work of the partners throughout, we will hold monthly or on-demand online meetings.

We met as acquaintances on November 21st at the online training of the international project “Walk in Our Shoes” supported by the International Visegrad Fund.
This time it was about the structure of sensitization tours to be held together.
After each training session, Sowelo Polish and EYCB Czech partners receive the related part of the training material developed by the People First Association. Thus, after the 3 online training sessions, the complete curriculum is compiled.
We will next meet online on December 5. It will be good! 🙂

The first training meeting of the project took place in a very good atmosphere.
Nine of us gathered in front of computer monitors for the first session of the online training. The training was held by the experts of People First, the Hungarian coordinator. A good number of members of Polish Sowelo took part actively, and the Czech EYCB was also represented.

The topics included barrier-free tourism, its relationship with the “Walk in Our Shoes” project, the goals and impacts of the project, and the role of good practices in the civil community. After the lectures, a useful and pleasant conversation developed about the topics.

After the training, participants received the training material developed by People First, which allows them to delve deeper into the topics and think about them further.

We’ll meet next on November 21., where the topic will already be the Hidden City Tor-Tour.

We also wanted to strengthen our cooperation with a project logo that can be used together. Thanks to the skillful experts of our Polish partner, SOWELO Foundation, an expressive logo has been created.

We believe that this contains everything we would like to say about the joint project: people with disabilities are working for accessibility, as they are the best experts in their field. Three countries are joining forces to learn and develop an innovative and exciting way to sensitize society.
Walk in our shoes, that is, try a new perspective together with us on a special tour!

The People First Association will hold an online training for project partners between 7. November and 5. December. The aim of the training is to prepare partners to develop their own Hidden City barrier-free downtown walk.

The participants of the training are experts participating in the project and people with disabilities, who will organize and lead the future Hidden City tours.

We will hold three online trainings with Hungarian, Polish and Czech partners on 7. November, 21. November and 5. December. We leave an extra opportunity open if we think there is still something to discuss.

The training is based on the Curriculum and Training Material developed by the experts of the People First Association.
Topics include accessible tourism, goals and impacts, tour structure, marketing, preparation, post-production, financing, and experience so far.