“UniDiversity” is a project about cultural identity and has to do with those characteristics that define us and make us belong to a group of people, community or country. We will work on different issues such as language, family, religion, education, gastronomy, politics, climate, customs, traditions, lifestyle, music, art ...organized into four main topics for study and research: 1. Role of women. We will study the traditional roles given to men and women in the different countries that participate in this project and the development of the role of women in the last century. We will pay special attention to all the messages that our culture through music, cinema , etc transmits us about what a woman is supposed to be and we will discuss about gender violence. 2. Prejudices and stereotypes. What do we think about ourselves and about the others? Is it real? How do they affect our attitude towards the immigrants? We will also learn about the others and discover the contribution of foreign cultures to our own ones. 3. Globalization and different lifestyles. We want to analyse how globalization is affecting our way of living and we'll see advantages and disadvantages. Are we losing our national identity because of globalization?. We will study about the use of the internet, social networks, mobile phones, Mass Media ... 4. Festivals and traditions. . It is impossible to deny the influence of culture in our way of thinking. That’s why we want to work on them, to get to know about different festivities, their origins, the similarities among the countries. The role of women and men in our traditions, the values they promote and if they have turned into old fashion or continue being current. 5. Education system and citizen participation. In this case we are going to compare our different education systems and the different ways to participate as critical citizens in our society. For each part a country has been chosen because of its special link to the topic we will be working about: -Role of men and women: Spain, because of its catholic and macho culture. Unfortunately, nowadays, violence against women is a great problem in our country . Prejudices and stereotypes: Greece, because of the high number of immigrants entering this country. -Festivities and traditions: Romania, because of its similarities to Spain (gypsy community and Latin language) and important similarities among the other countries. It is said to be a very religious country where many ethnic groups live up together. -Globalization/Different lifestyles: Poland, because it is a recent member of the EU (2004) and because of its communist background. So we can study how globalization has been changing its society over the years. -Education and citizen participation: Sweden, because of its high reputation for having a great education system and its strong democracy. The purpose of all the activities is to promote among the students the development of skills such as the empathy, teamwork, dialogue…and to reach this objective we must think about our differences. Are they as deep as we can fancy? What do we have in common? Is there anything that can be called national identity? And if it is so, can we make of it a source of enrichment? Our methodology will be active and collaborative based on the use of the new technologies and the different tools from the web 2.0 such as Blog, Wiki, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc..Students will access knowledge from a constructivist perspective, they will learn "by doing" and they will be working on the different activities in national and international cooperative teams sharing goals in order to maximize the learning. Videos, podcasts, digital books etc...will be made and shared on the net… Afterwards when meeting up in a country we will review our conclusions and reflect on our previous work. Workshops will be carried out and the final products,after each visit, will be uploaded to the various digital platforms too(e-twinning, blog, etc…) There will be also exhibitions, presentations, discussions...and a constant dissemination plan of the whole project. Our main aim is not only to find out similarities and differences among the countries involved and reflect on it but also to make students and teachers get involved in the knowledge creation process by working together and try to go a bit further so as to achieve meaningful learning by extending it beyond the classroom. Our project is a “pro human” project, with an individual-centred approach ,because we think that by searching for our own identity and getting to know the others better we can become more tolerant, generous, critical, supportive, understanding and appreciate the different cultures as a vehicle of enrichment based on mutual respect. Learning from ourselves and from the others can be an important way of social integration to build a better world.
“UniDiversity" is a project about cultural identity and has to do with those characteristics that define us and make us belong to a group of people, community or country. That’s why, we worked on different issues such as language, family, religion, education, gastronomy, politics, climate, customs, traditions, lifestyle, music, art etc, organized into four main topics for research: 1. Role of women. We studied the traditional roles given to men and women in the different countries and the development of the role of women in the last century. We paid special attention to all the messages that our culture through music, cinema , etc transmits us about what a woman is supposed to be and we discussed about gender violence. 2. Prejudices and stereotypes. What did we think about ourselves and about the others? Did it affect our attitude towards the migrants? 3. Globalization and different lifestyles. We analysed how globalization was affecting our way of living and we saw advantages and disadvantages. Were we losing our national identity because of globalization? We also studied about the use of the internet, social networks, mobile phones etc. 4. Festivals and traditions. It is impossible to deny the influence of culture in our way of thinking. That’s why we wanted to get to know about different festivities, their origins and similarities among the countries. 5. Education system and citizen participation. We compared our different education systems and the different ways to participate as critical citizens in our society. These were the countries involved in: Spain, Poland and Romania and these were the different contributions that each organization brought to our project: - Spain. We focused on the topic of women because of its catholic and macho culture. Many cases of gender-based violence were taking place and we wanted to find out whether it only happened in our country or it had become a global problem. - Rumania. We worked on festivals and traditions as it was interesting to see its similarities to Spain ( gypsy community and Latin language) and also for being a religious country where many ethnic groups lived up together. - Poland. Being one of the relatively recent countries that joined the European Union after the fall of communism, we were interested in getting to know how this transition had taken place, how it had affected people in its opening towards Europe and the impact on its economy and society. We also dealt with prejudices and stereotypes because of the high number of migrants in our countries; we wanted to look into the problem of refugees and its possible solutions. Finally, we compared the different education systems and the citizen participation in each of the countries. The purpose of all the activities was to promote among the students the development of skills such as the empathy, teamwork, critical thinking, dialogue…and to reach this objective we had to think about our differences. Were they as deep as we could fancy? What did we have in common? Was there anything that could be called national identity? And if it was so, could we make of it a source of enrichment? Our methodology was active and collaborative based on the use of the new technologies and the different tools from the web 2.0 such as Blog, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. Our students, between 16 and 18 years old accessed knowledge from a constructivist perspective, they learnt "by doing" and they were working on the different activities in national and international cooperative teams sharing goals in order to maximize the learning. Videos, podcasts, digital books etc were made and shared on the net. Afterwards, we shared conclusions and reflected on our previous work when meeting up in a country. Workshops were carried out and the final products, after each visit, were uploaded to the various digital platforms too (e-twinning, blog, etc).There was a constant diffusion of the project and there were exhibitions, exhibitions and presentations throughout the process, having a greater impact than expected. Our project has been a “pro human” project, with an individual-centred approach. Learning from ourselves and from the others has turned us into more tolerant, generous, critical, supportive and understanding people and and this is an important form of social integration to build a better world. Once the project is over, we can say that we have achieved our initial objectives. We have managed to foster respect for different cultures and we have also learned from our own experience that diversity truly enriches us. "UniDiversity" has allowed us to reflect on our identity and turn the process into a source of enrichment through teamwork and by sharing our ideas, knowledge, cultures, experiences and emotions.