Knowledge-transfer training in Budapest, 7 November, 2018

The second event of the project titled Single Incident Monitoring System For Fostering Security of Jewish Communities took place in Budapest on the 7 of November, 2018.

We invited representatives of our partners (from Chabad Slovakia and the Polish Fundacja Chai) to visit the Action and Protection Foundation’s (APF) office for a 1-day training. The purpose of the meeting was to present the work of the APF, particularly those methodologies and mechanisms that have been effectively and successfully applied to counter Anti-Semitic incidents in Hungary. Also, two Hungarian data analysts (native Polish and Slovakian) took part in the training since they will be involved into the monitoring process in Slovakia and Poland in early 2019.

As a result of previous cooperation, the project partners were familiar with the mission of APF already, though they did not know the organizations’ structure and daily workflow in details. Therefore, a detailed introduction were given to them about APF’s history, the neccesity of its establishment 6 years ago and its workstructures. Kalman Szalai, Secretary of APF and Orsolya Nagy, Head of office introduced the three pillars of APF’ work (research & monitoring, the education and legal protection) and how these elements influence each other. They underlined that scientifically well grounded research & monitoring are necessary for two main reasons: 1/ to receive a clear and real picture of anti-semitic phenomena in contemporary Hungary; 2/ to develope our action programs, including education, legal protection and lobbying based on the real and objective data gained from the research.

Chabad Slovakia and Fundacja Chai have not yet implemented programs specifically created to face Anti-semitism, therefore we highlighted the special features and pecularities of our work. Having an eye on the project focus (establishing single research & monitoring system in the region), Krisztián Nádasi, lead researcher and Zoltan Tatai, monitoring expert gave a thorough description of APF’s monitoring system. They presented effectively managed cases and also talked about the challenges, difficulties and strengths of our work. APF’ staff highlighted also the competences & skills that are neccessary for each phasis of the monitoring process.