“Walk in Our Shoes”, international V4 project

The project’s communication platform is now ready! From now on, follow the project’s news and the best practices in accessible tourism from around the world there. Since it is an interactive platform, feel free to comment, discuss, connect, and build a community and joint projects together! Click here to access the platform: https://hiddencity.eu

Project title:
Walk in Our Shoes – Inclusive city adventure
Social Development, promoting an inclusive mindset in society and addressing protection and empowerment of minorities

Project period:
20.09.2023–10.02.2025 

Supporter:
The International Visegrad Fund: https://www.visegradfund.org/

Partner organisations:
People First Public Benefit Association, HUNGARY (https://peoplefirst.hu/en/)
European Youth Centre Břeclav z. s., CZECHIA (https://eycb.eu/en/)
SOWELO Foundation, POLAND  (https://sowelo.net.pl/

 

Project summary:
Spreading social sensitization in countries where democracy and human rights need to be strengthened. As a good practice, we share an innovative solution with our partners to spread the importance of accessibility.  

Accessibility and barrier-free tourism needs to be strongly promoted in the V4 countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary). However, the receptivity is there in the V4 countries, the precedents are also there (accessibility efforts, laws, the society is receptive), so there is something to build on.
Lack of accessibility currently makes life difficult for many social groups. There is hardly a topic where the target group is so broad: not only disabled people are affected, but also the elderly, families with small children, people with temporary disabilities and everyone who wants to live more comfortably without barriers.
Accessibility is a problem at European level, but it is a definite deficiency in the former Eastern European countries (including V4). The kind of a playful, cheerful, self-experience-based form of social sensitization that our project offers as the best practice is much more effective. Society can benefit from being able to approach a social problem as an own experience. 

We want to create a network where we can share our experiences. We have a special, proven, good practice, and we would like to disseminate it within the framework of this project.. People First Public Benefit Association therefore offers our Hidden City TorTour as its best practice in this project.
https://peoplefirst.hu/en/blog-post/rejtett-varos-tor-tour-a/

In addition to the implementation in partner countries, we can also see what further development opportunities exist in our Hidden City project.  

Within accessibility, barrier-free tourism is also a major area to be developed in the V4 countries. Tourism operators have not realised that barrier-free tourism itself is an excellent business opportunity that they should take advantage of.  Therefore, another goal of the project is to promote and develop barrier-free tourism, also in an innovative and cheerful way. Our aim is not to put pressure on tourism actors (neither tourists nor tourism service providers), but to show the need and good side of accessibility. 

People can only understand the problem if they can feel it.
This means that we need to make people feel and understand that social inclusion is everyone’s business. Society is enriched with each active member. Accessibility is the core element of independent living.  

We noticed that people are happy to help. However, there is an inconceivable lack of information in society about accessibility and the needs of disadvantaged groups. Legislation and regulations on the need for accessibility mean a lot. But because they are mandatory, and because there is insufficient control over their enforcement, they are not fully implemented. 

There is no similar initiative in Hungary, this is a special, unique project. It is also completely unique in Poland and Czechia.  Participants of these Hiddes City Tor-Tour walks will most certainly be accessibility activists with a powerful multiplier effect!  

Important added elements of the project:
The walks are guided by people with disabilities, for them this is a job and learn opportunity!
Walks have to be paid for, so this is an income possibility for the NGO.
It is an excellent possibility to build professional relationships with tourist providers, with other local actors and participants. 

Target groups:
Residents of partner cities
Tourists from partner cities
Multipliers 

Goal:
The main goal is to provide our Hidden City Tor-Tour project within the framework of this project as the best practice that we would like to spread. 

How does the project work?
The People First Association develops training materials on the methodology of the Hidden City Tor-Tour. Than People First provides online training for partners on how to create their own Hidden City Tor-Tour in their country. It is up to the partnerswhether they adopt our method based on what they have learned in this project or add their own ideas too.
After the partners develop their own projects in Czechia and Poland, we proceed to piloting, i.e. we test them together. 

Sustainability of the project:
We will create a network with partners, which can be expanded to other countries later.  We organize an online closing conference on topics such as: barrier-free tourism, results and sustainability, building a wider network, involving new partners, new innovation opportunities, involvement of tourism professionals, publicity.

Follow the progress of the project here, or on the partners’ Web and Facebook pages.

Take a look at our Hidden City Tor-Tour with PécsTV:
Youtube People First

17

May 24

2024-05-17

Study tour in Pécs on our Hidden City project

Polish and Czech partners visited Pécs for a 3 day study tour, as the first step of visiting each other.

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2

May 24

2024-05-02

News from Poland

Polish partner Sowelo sent news of their project progress. Happy to see great development in Poznan!

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7

Mar 24

2024-03-07

The communication Platform is ready to launch

Another productive monthly meeting: the joint Platform is ready, and the Polish and Czech sensitising city walks are being developed.

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9

Feb 24

2024-02-09

Polish sensitisation tour already in testing phase

The Polish team planned the route of the walk in Poznan. We will see the results in July!

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21

Jan 24

2024-01-21

An international group spreads the word about Hungarian “Hidden city”

Our basic aim is to offer our tour as an accompanying professional programme. This one is a great example.

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6

Dec 23

2023-12-06

The training is complete, the project development starts

The Czech and Polish partners start developing their own projects. We're looking forward to it!

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23

Nov 23

2023-11-23

Training continues

We met as acquaintances on the 2nd session. This time it was about the structure of joint sensitization tours.

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8

Nov 23

2023-11-08

Our first joint training

We talked about barrier-free tourism, effects of the project and the role of best practices at the first training session.

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2

Nov 23

2023-11-02

The project logo is ready

Thanks to our Polish partner an expressive logo has been created. It contains everything we want to say about the...

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30

Oct 23

2023-10-30

Partner Training starts

The People First Association will hold an online training for project partners between 7. November and 5. December.

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