For three years now our sticker project has been carried out steadily and more professionally. Between 1. January 2021 and 30. November 2021. the current phase WAS SUPPORTED BY THE CITIZENS OF PÉCS THEMSELVES through the “Élő Adás/Live Broadcast” community fundraising project of the Pécs Community Foundation. This gave the project a special boost, atmosphere and heart.
In the third phase, we undertook to
– we continuously go through and review existing sites
– we map all accessible accommodation in Pécs
– we organise a national conference on accessibility and cooperation between organisations carrying out similar activities in the country
The Covid pandemic has made our activities more difficult even now, at the beginning of 2021 we were only able to carry out our work difficultly due to the closures during the third wave of the epidemic. However, this period has been devoted to professional training, recasting the methodology, preparing and upgrading existing locations.
Also at the beginning of the year we had a successful discussion with the municipality of Pécs, Deputy Mayor Lajos Nyögéri. The result was continuous cooperation, during which we were able to participate effectively in the tourism development and marketing of the city. Among other things, we became responsible for accessible tourism at the Tourist RoundTable, carried out an accessible review of the city’s official renewable website (https://pecs.hu/), appeared on the page in an extra menu item our Barrier-free Pécs database (https://pecs.hu/pecsi-vagyok/ ), published with the support of the city the print publication of the Barrier-free Pécs database, and a written Cooperation Agreement was established between our association and the city.
We tried to inform the public about our activities in all forms: we sent Newsletters to the supporters and participants of the Barrier-free Pécs database about the progress of our activities, we reported on the new locations in regular Facebook and Instagram posts and campaigns, we talked about the database at numerous workshops and conferences both in Hungary and abroad, we were Best practice in several international projects, we filmed eye-catching flashmob videos that can still be seen on our own Youtube channel, we have been in the press several times, we have made business cards for team members.
It was a huge step forward that thanks to our IT developers our website and database were professionally eded out in May. This makes searchability, appearance and interactive options much easier and smarter.
Cooperation with the Tourinform office Pécs was also an important step, as a result of which our fun Hidden City Tor-Tour, presenting the accessibility of Pécs, became a permanent thematic tourist offer (https://peoplefirst.hu/en/blog-post/rejtett-varos-tor-tour-a/)
On 10. November 2021, in the shadow of Covid, but we held our national conference very successfully. Here an exciting professional discussion emerged about the need for accessibility, its human fundamental rights, and the topic of accessibility of historic buildings which is particularly topical in Pécs. We will build cooperation in the future with the other 3 organizations in Hungary that operate a similar accessible list or database.
There are currently 74 locations per 12 categories or parts of the city (Downtown, Kertváros, Uránváros, outside Pécs) in the Barrier-free Pécs database. The exploration of the sites was carried out regularly by 10 members. Our IT development was carried out by Balázs Oláh and Zoltán Borsodi. We were able to present 10 accommodations/hotels as accessible in the database, however, we have three times that number of which we visited in Pécs. We had to ask about 20 of the existing sites to make the changes.
We have already seen a very positive attitude from both the site owners/managers and the people of the city, the press and the city administration. Go Pécs, let the county seat of Baranya be exemplaryly accessible!
Our team is tired by the end of the third year and we cannot appreciate them financially enough. So we will not continue the excavations in this form. However, this does not mean that we do not develop or expand the Barrier-free Pécs database! We are creating a stand-by team and looking for new accessible locations in and around Pécs, just as we are very much looking for more support opportunities!
If you would like to support our activities, you can also do so by using the ADOMÁNYOZOK (DONATE) button on the homepage of our website in the form of a bank transfer.