Project

The LIGHT ON project (Cross-community actions for combating the modern symbolism and languages of racism and discrimination) is funded by the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Commission.
LIGHT ON (January 2013 – December 2014) aims to tackle the normalization of racism and its related images and habits, providing a set of tools for the community, but also for law enforcement professionals, through a preventive and participatory approach calling everyone to put discrimination in the spotlight — and combating it.
The general objective of the project is to contribute to the development of a culture that denounces racism, underlines its social disvalue, and promotes an active role of individuals in combating racism, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance.

In line with the aims of the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme and with the priorities of the Justice Directorate-General of the European Commission, LIGHT ON:

• Challenges the normalization of racism and xenophobia and their acceptance as normal expressions of dialogue and social life in everyday life, through scientific research that identifies the images that explicitly and implicitly express racism, while at the same time analyzing how communities perceive them. The research will also constitute the framework to build a set of tools aimed at raising the awareness of European citizens;
• Strengthens the capacity of professionals and authorities to denounce hate crimes and discriminatory behaviors, through a highly specialized training model and a toolbox for the recognition of racist or discriminatory features, even when hidden in social behaviors that we normally accept;
• Encourages citizens to report if they become victims or witness an incident of discrimination.  With targeted activities aimed to encourage complaints to responsible authorities, we seek to create a proactive enforcement of discrimination where each infraction follows a penalty, formal or informal, in contrast to the normalization of racism;
• Provides tools for the promotion of European campaigns that will be validated by a European antidiscrimination consortium and tested in five national campaigns.

The project applies a preventive approach to racism, focuses on the recipients helping them to recognize discrimination, and promotes positive role models through a communication system that, in addition to the traditional tools, includes a wiki, a social network-based reporting system and a video documentary. LIGHT ON focuses on the negative social impact of racism, and analyses how they are perceived from victims and common people.

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