September was busy, but we made it!

We already reported on the first of these sessions, which took place on September 30 and 31 in Kozojedy near Prague for 15 Labor Office employees, in our previous article.

Another training session took place on September 8 and 9, this time in the training room of the Labor Office General Directorate in Prague. An additional 15 Labor Office staff members were trained.

September 13 and 14 were dedicated to training for Labor Office employees from branches outside of Prague. Staff arrived in the capital from Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Hradec Králové, and other cities across the Czech Republic. The training was held in the Labor Office General Directorate training room in Prague, with 20 people in attendance.

On September 16 and 17, training was held for employees of the Department for Asylum and Migration Policy of the Ministry of the Interior in Kozojedy near Prague. We provided new information to 13 participants.

The most recent training for Labor Office employees took place in Olomouc on September 22 and 23, where 14 staff members from Olomouc, Ostrava, and Brno were trained.

The training sessions are designed as two-day events. Civil servants and members of security forces can expect a packed program full of interesting information. The program includes, for example, a module on migration, cultural identity, and how it changes.

We consider the "Guest Chair" session to be a very important and popular part of the training. A foreigner living in the Czech Republic is invited to share their experiences, and participants then have the opportunity to ask them questions.

The program also includes the basics of communicating with foreigners and addressing stereotypes about foreigners in the majority society. At the end of each session, civil servants and security personnel fill out a questionnaire to evaluate the training and its impact on their professional lives. Participants assess whether they will use the knowledge in their work with foreigners, which parts they found most beneficial, and which they did not. They also evaluate the instructors' performance and provide other feedback to help improve future sessions.

The questionnaires will be processed by experts and summarized in an evaluation report. The feedback received to date has been very positive regarding the training and the knowledge gained.

By the end of 2021, we have 12 more training sessions scheduled in Pardubice, Brno, Olomouc, Hostivice, Ostrava, and Ústí nad Labem. In the coming period, we plan to finalize the methodology for a follow-up type of training and subsequently conduct further instructor training.

A PowerPoint presentation will be created for the follow-up training methodology. A total of 900 civil servants and security personnel are to be trained, with the involvement of security forces scheduled to begin in January 2022.

The project "Strengthening Intercultural Competencies of Civil Servants and Security Forces" (AMIF/29/02) is funded by the European Union under the national program of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the budget of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic.

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