Becoming a multicultural European

The project "Becoming a multicultural citizen of the EU" intended to combine virtual learning and communication with personal experience at transnational project meetings. The three applying schools have a wealth of experience in international projects using the eTwinning platform. However during the project some of these teachers transferred to new schools so that the eTwinning platform was not used to the intended extent. Staff and pupils at the schools met people of different cultural and religious backgrounds both at school and in their freetime. There has been migration between the three countries of Bulgaria, Germany and Romania and the debate at the time of application about stereotypes has been replaced with the refugee challenge. This has strengthened our belief that misconceptions about other nations and cultures can only be overcome by communication and interaction. Thus the project has focused on personal interaction at transnational project meetings. One of the objectives was to find ways of encouraging students to meet people of different cultures and to overcome common prejudices through working on the same project and doing assignments in international group work during transnational project meetings. The consortium has surveyed students on their conception of the other nations before the project, during international group work and after transnational meetings to find out if communication, interaction and personal meetings have had an influence on their opinions. The project started with a meeting at the coordinating school in Hagen which focused on organisational issues and trained staff to carry out the project effectively (e.g. intercultural training, successful blogging, using eTwinning, scientific input on migration). Pupils were involved in order to work as multipliers for the project at each school. The teachers participating were members of the project team and the pupils were chosen among those who were interested. The next project step comprised the investigation of migration involving the three countries, approaches included historical research, interpretation of statistics and interviewing people with a migrational background. Students learned how to present their findings in an international setting during the project meeting. These activities led to the project meeting in Romania at which the ebook "History of migration: The cases of Bulgaria, Romania and Germany" was prepared. The next project step looked at the current situation and students' feelings towards each other and focused on multicultural concepts and issues. The focus was on the development of a strategy of managing diversity at all schools - staff and students defining general needs and special content for each school. These strategies were discussed and prepared at the transnational project meeting in Bulgaria which also identified steps for implementing those strategies. The last project step was devoted to religion as the political situation at the moment calls for interreligous dialogue in order to make students strong against extremist views. We believe that if you know facts and believers of other faiths you are less likely to develop hostile attitudes against a different religion. This led to the last project meeting in Hagen in the Ruhr area which is a melting pot regarding religions. As case in point is Duisburg-Marxloh where we talked to people of differen religions and their work either in interreligious dialogue or in a multicultural setting. We wanted to look at the role the EU plays in the area of multicultural policies and visited the European Parliament in Brussels to talk to an MEP and visit the exhibition on the history of the EU. Moreover we met Belgian youths to discuss their experience of interreligious dialogue as residents of Brussels in a Protestant church. As a result of this project we now have a blog documenting all our activities, an ebook on migration, three strategies of implementing diversity in schools as best-practice examples and a guideline of how to carry out interreligous dialogue. We believe that this will change the participating schools and set a good example. Last but not least we hope to have influenced our students and staff to be open-minded concerning multicultural settings and enabled students to work in international environments. The evaluation of the project has shown that students will remember the people they have met and that they enjoyed their time spent in host families very much. They judged the topics we have talked about as interesting and significant for the times we are living in.