We focused on the prevention of violence and homophobic bullying of LGBT people. By creating a peer mentoring portal inspired by Norwegian experience, LGBT persons in crisis have been provided with a place that not only offers serious information but, in particular, allows communication with peer mentors, who are individuals with a similar life experience. Throughout the project, the portal received 96,604 visits and 40 mentors were approached by 1,168 people, most of whom came from outside of Prague and were under 25 years of age. The subject matter of the contacts mostly included problems with internal and external coming-out. Mentors also solved cases of homophobic bullying and helped four people with suicidal tendencies. Our activities also involved a massive campaign targeting young people. Our video has been watched by 50,000 people, we distributed 10,000 leaflets and our articles or banners have been read and seen by 21,000 people. Ester Janečková became the patron of the project, helping the publicity of the project greatly. We also focused on the training of mentors (six training sessions) and professional staff (five trainings throughout the Czech Republic were attended by 68 people). The experience from a year’s operation of the portal has shown that such a place had been considerably missing in the Czech Republic. Prague Pride will continue running the portal after the end of the project.
The website of the project can be found here: www.sbarvouven.cz.
