Since the beginning of human migration, the world has become a multicultural place. People travel and share their discoveries, ideas and beliefs. Nowadays we are observing increased dynamics of a globalisation process. The migration has become more intensive as the UK borders disappeared. We are observing an integration of countries and a corelation of societies. A kindergarten and a school environment also became a place where different cultures and nationalities have a chance to meet and cooexist. We decided to prepare a project about multicultural Europe to prepare children for a life in a global village in an atmosphere of tolerance and friendship. Childchood is the best time for shaping the appropriate social behaviour patterns, including tolerance, respect towards others and proecological activity. We wanted to create a project that would help us to prepare children for life in a multicultural society of Europe. We believe the role of a multicultural education is to learn about differences and similarities between societies, to level stereotypes and barriers, develop respect toward others and to shape communicative competences for an open dialogue. Through the realisation of the project with different countries of Eastern Europe we want to start an active and effective cooperation that would enlarge the meening of tolerance in the world we live in. We want to promote Erasmus + initiatives ona local and international level, showing its positive impact on the participants. We are sure that the sucess of the project will contribute to pernament and positive changes in our private and personal lives.
Project „Young European in the world of tolerance” was based on the common work of five educational institutions from Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Its main idea derived from the belief that it is a necessity for all educators to teach the youngest about the multiculturalism and tolerance as it is the values needed to change the world for better. Since the beginning of human migration, the world has become a multicultural place. People travel and share their discoveries, ideas and beliefs. Nowadays we are observing increased dynamics of a globalization process. The migration has become more intensive as the EU borders disappeared. We are observing an integration of countries and a correlation of societies. Without tolerance, openness and abilities to fight stereotypes future generations will face severe difficulties in coexistence in the multicultural Europe. Our project was an answer to this need. Through the project activities we taught tolerance, multiculturalism in five different social contexts and we are proud to have achieved a positive impact on our recipients. We engaged over 1500 individuals in our venture (children, teachers, parents, members of local societies, local authorities, Internet users etc) .We also invited over 50 institutions to work together to share our project idea with, to disseminate the results and to promote the advantages that the international cooperation of educational institutions in Erasmus+ projects offers. The main aims that were achieved after two years of work are: increase of participants’ knowledge in the field of partner countries, multiculturalism, ecology, development of key competences needed in a multicultural society (communication, foreign languages, social competence), the development of a need to be a part of the European family and to take care of our common environment. We created lots of results and products of the project that we hope will be used by others after the project is finished (lesson scripts, play scripts, eco-gardens, cookery books, art exhibitions, workshops etc). Some of the project tasks have become the part of project institutions’ curriculum (the International Day of Tolerance, the European Day of Languages). Two short-term teacher trainings gave us the occasion to equip the educators from the project schools and kindergartens with knowledge and skills needed to teach tolerance and ecology to others, develop their key competences and professional experience needed to educate young European children.