Civil society actors launch a campaign to promote tolerance to diversity drawing on the Eurovision’s slogan.
The slogan of the Eurovision 2017 Song Contest needs to be primarily considered in a wider context of respect to human diversity. “We have not noticed any attempts on the part of the central or city authorities to work with this slogan. So we decided to make it visible, we made a video and a series of posters featuring characters of the campaign,” explained Iryna Fedorovych, representative of the NGO “Social Action” Center and a coordinator at the Coalition Against Discrimination speaking at a press-briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
Each person in Ukraine has the right to be him/herself without fearing the negative reaction of the society upon their peculiarities. The campaign lasts for one month and features six people. “They are Ulyana and Vitaliy Pcholkin, people with disability; Roman – Roma by origin, Bohdan – internally displaced and a combat veteran, Kira – a transgender girl and Yana – a person with HIV,” Fedorovych said.
One of the campaign characters, Yana Panfilova, founder of the Teenergizer initiative, has been living with HIV for all her life. In her early years she used to live in Cherkasy where she was facing aggression and lack of understanding on the part of her peers. Her friend whom she told about her status left her. “HIV positive persons, teenagers namely, need not suffer from any act of discrimination, they are common people,” Panfilova is convinced.
Two hundred and twenty posters featuring the characters of the campaign have been placed in downtown Kyiv. The campaign’s video is available in Ukrainian and English on YouTube channel of the “Social Action” Center.
