Intercultural education for mutual acceptance and solidarity

The aim of this project was to develop multicultural and intercultural competencies through promoting values of democracy, human rights and active citizenship. The goal of the project was to increase understanding, respectful communication and full inclusion of people from different background. Intercultural education enables student to gain cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to become responsible citizens of society- it provides students with respect, understanding, solidarity among different ethnic, social and cultural groups and nations and different individuals as well. Intercultural competence represents ability to adopt attitudes, skills and knowledge in order to better understand and different cultures. Intercultural education supports and acknowledges differences in all aspects of life but at the same time promotes equality, stands against discrimination. We live in multicultural society, our schools exist in multicultural environment and our students need to develop intercultural competence - they need to learn how to respect and accept differences, different world view, to put themselves in other people's shoes but to keep their personal values at the same time. This project had to carry out transnational because intercultural competence, it's not specific to a place or people, it’s an issue of global concern, it extends beyond borders, especially in our time when we witness increase manifestation of prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination and hate speech and of phenomenon of terrorism, migration, xenophobia, racism, etc..... These phenomenon is linked to different socio- economic and political inequalities and misunderstandings between different culture groups. The combat for multicultural understanding must also be global because the ability to understand each other and to communicate to each other is a prerequisite for our society to work and for all of us to live in peaceful coexistence. Unfortunately, due to the covid-19 crisis and closing the schools, not all the mobilities took place. This is the case for C5 and C6, although preparations P5 and P6 together with the stakeholders were made. Creating an alternative programme was impossible due to the closed schools since March 2020, however children kept in tough by Whatsapp and e-mail with their host families or friends they've made during the mobilities before. They could tell their fellow pupils how things were going in the other countries during the crisis. Students discovered that there were all lot of mutual concerns on school, school results, parents possibly losing jobs and that those concerns were the same in all the three countries. The main aims: creating mutual acceptance, increasing respectful communication were realized, despite cultural differences and background, their situation was the same in all the countries during the crisis.