Perfect timing for Polish anti-racist exhibition

The conclusion to Africa's first FIFA World Cup was celebrated in Poland with the staging of an exhibition by the Never Again Association which coordinates the UEFA-backed anti-racist East Europe Monitoring Centre.

The Never Again Association (Stowarzyszenie Nigdy Wiecej) organised the opening of the 'Let's kick racism out of the stadiums' exhibition to coincide with Sunday's World Cup final in South Africa. A racially diverse audience at Warsaw's Home Africa Bar was presented with a multicultural history of Polish football, at an event co-hosted by Stanley Udenkwor, a Nigerian-born former KSP Polonia Warszawa player and Polish national.

Never Again's primary function is to direct the FARE Eastern European Development Project on behalf of UEFA's partner, the Football Against Racism in Europe network. The lead initiative of this project, which UEFA funds, is the anti-racist East Europe Monitoring Centre, launched last November to monitor, research and document cases of racism across the region in the build-up to UEFA EURO 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

'Let's kick racism out of the stadiums' charts the participation of ethnic minorities and migrant communities in the domestic game as well as covering the problem of racism and xenophobia in Polish stadiums. It will also show at Poland's popular Woodstock Festival later this summer.

Never Again spokesman Jacek Purski said of the timing of the launch event: "As co-hosts of the forthcoming UEFA EURO 2010 tournament, we [Poland] should learn from the South African experience in order to organise a multicultural event full of joy and respect."

The new exhibition represents the latest educational campaign run by Never Again, whose monitoring work is focused on Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary yet also reaches out as far as Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus and Moldova. The FARE Eastern European Development Project was initially conceived as a three-year programme to support the preparation of the UEFA EURO 2012 tournament and anti-discriminatory activities in eastern European territories.