The context of the project is on going migrant crisis and its challenges at the labour market and the social cohesion of small local communities that face the need of adapting new learning strategies. The low skilled groups coming from disadvantaged backgrounds lack the cross cultural competence. The gap in education in European context in that area, such as cultural diversity, communication skills, positive attitude to change, openness, dialog skills result in prejudice, stigmatizing and stereotyping as recent political situations in many countries show. In Poland, only in Lower Silesia region there is over 60.000 registered Ukrainian migrant workers filling the employment gap in sectors requiring law skilled manual workers. Polish highly monocultural society suddenly faces the challenge of “meeting with the Other” that creates fears and therefore danger of aggressive attitudes. The atmosphere is getting tense over last few years resulting in radicalization of youth but also groups with lower chances and lack of education. In Italy the situation is similar with migrants from North Africa being employed in industrial sector, that are often perceived as “invaders” threatening the local status quo. The Greece recently faces very high immigrant flows, Romania, instead, is one of immigrant corridor toward Western Europe countries. Beside that, there's a lot of EU internal mobility generated by different factors, both Eastern to Western and vice versa. While in metropolitan areas high diversity is quite obvious fact, in small local communities, especially in those with low qualified habitants, the fact of migrations generate insecurity and lack of understanding for different cultures and habbits. With our project we want to address those issues with main goal of empowering local communities as spaces for cross cultural dialog and building peaceful and understanding attitudes both in receiving and incoming social groups and also improving the education of low skill workers (as individuals) in the area of multicultural knowledge and competence. Transnational perspective is crucial to the project aim in terms of knowledge transfer, exchange of the good practices and giving feedback from different perspectives. It is not possible to treat intercultural education in national prospective only, since the migration which happens inside EU countries is enriched by migrations from outside EU countries.
context/background of the project; The project was born from the observation of reality and the new challenges we are called to face in the fields of education and social inclusion. For all the European countries the drama of migration and the consequent problem of reception and integration is creating strong social contrasts, not only in large cities, for years used to multiculturalism, but now also in rural areas, small towns and in communities that had never coexisted with different languages, religions, habits and colours so far. The meeting between people of different cultures in communities with a low level of education and above all in a sudden and massive way has unfortunately created misunderstandings, fears and mistrust rather than an opportunity to enrich their cultural baggage. In most cases, integration has not taken place and migrants live with local communities with enormous discomfort. objectives; - The project intends to provide anyone working in the adult education sector with a useful tool to help integration and mutual knowledge thanks to the use of VR technology - Tackling cultural diversity with innovative methods - Offer the ability to communicate through new learning strategies - Live immersive experiences that prepare the learner for daily challenges in work contexts and in life in general - Encourage a positive attitude to change, openness, and a greater capacity for dialogue which results in a reduction of the prejudices and stereotypes that often experience people who are unable to communicate in the language of the country in which they live - Increase intercultural education not only from a national perspective: migrations take place within all EU countries and beyond number and type/profile of participants; The result of Viral is a digital platform, free, easy to use and accessible to all. This "toolbox" is dedicated to all those associations, schools, public bodies that in small communities are involved in teaching the language to migrants and, more generally, in promoting integration and promoting mutual knowledge. description of undertaken activities; In the TOOLBOX there is everything you need to introduce virtual reality in your projects aimed at adult education in the intercultural and linguistic fields. The educational material is organized in three sections: the MAKE VR VIDEO section contains simple guides on how to create VR videos and write your own script, the DIDACTIC UNITS section contains the pilot learning units of intercultural and foreign language teaching along with some videos VR made by partners; finally in the third MANUAL section a complete guide to the integration of virtual reality in the teaching of intercultural and foreign languages results and impact attained; Using virtual reality in the field of language learning can become the key to speed up the integration process especially for all those people who come to our countries without having adequate instruction and therefore presenting more difficulties in learning a foreign language with classical methods. On the other hand, virtual reality can be an extremely effective way of creating that empathy necessary for mutual understanding and acceptance of the other. Living, even for a few minutes, as an immigrant catapulted into an unknown world, where he’s not understood and where he doesn’t understand, sometimes derided or, even worse, abused, can be the only way to make these two worlds feel closer. if relevant, longer-term benefits. Creating that empathy necessary for mutual understanding and acceptance of the other.