In the last forty years Europe has become a multicultural, multilingual and pluri religious society. Immigration phenomena cannot be considered an emergency anymore. As European citizens, we need to develop an intercultural attitude to be able to manage the cultural differences that increasingly characterize schools, job places, social services and public spaces. Objectives Intercultural skills cannot be improvised: they need specific training and a self-reflective attitude, which can be learned. In this project, we propose to: • fostering intercultural competences in different target groups by disseminating the MCE innovative intercultural approach thanks to training courses and multiplier events; • developing an intercultural approach in public and private life that can help to fight against discrimination, racism and extremism in schools, social services, public spaces, and so on; • developing, through the intellectual outputs and the joint staff training, a standardised competences framework, a course curriculum for intercultural training, original methods and new toolkits starting form Cohen-Emerique’s approach. Cohen Emerique’s intercultural approach: Cohen-Emerique noticed that migrants and professionals working with migrants often go through misunderstandings, cultural shocks and violent conflicts because of the different cultural frameworks and scale of values they act. When they live these cultural shocks, they fell vulnerable, angry, disoriented and their personal and professional skills are nearly paralyzed by these negative feelings. Instead of breaking off dialogue and relationship, Cohen-Emerique invites trainers, educators, volunteers and migrants to live cultural shocks as an opportunity to become aware of everyone’s cultural points of view, to share them by using words in order to promote dialogue and mutual understanding. Target groups: We address to intercultural trainers working in the social, education and health sectors, to professional educators working in social services, child protective services, in the juvenile justice field and in recreational public spaces, adult teachers working with migrants both in formal and non conventional schooling contexts, migrant parents, young migrants and volunteers working with immigrates in food stations, centres for first assistance and family clinics. Partners: Ruah (Italy) is a cooperative that aims at promoting social inclusion and an intercultural approach by offering intercultural training, language courses and welcoming first centres activities for refugees. Artemisszio (Hungary) is an independent private non-profit organisation that encourages continuous interaction between culturally, ethnically and socially diverse groups. They propose intercultural training based on the MCE approach and innovative methodologies such as forum theatre. CBAI (Belgium) is an association active in the fields of intercultural training, welcoming first-comers in the Brussels- Capital Region and supporting migrants associations. CESIE (Italy) is a European Centre of Studies that aims at stimulating change in educational, cultural and economic spheres. They have been working with the MCE cultural shocks methods in different domains (i.e.: diversity management in healthcare). Elan Interculturel (France) is an organisation that develops new methods to facilitate intercultural communication, collaboration and adaptation; the organisation’s staff has been directly trained by Margalit Cohen Emerique. Diesis (Belgium) is a European Research and Development Service for Social Economy which covers more than 10 EU countries through major national federations and national support networks.
The objective we want to achieve is not to disperse the heritage of knowledge, experience and practices gained by Cohen Emerique and all the realities that have continued his work. Specifically, we intend to develop a benchmark for trainers intending to learn and use the EMC method. As a results, trainers will be equipped with reinforced methodological tools, they will share new, innovative methods to be combined with the critical incident methodology and they will receive additional help for further professional self-development. Overall, during the project, we focused on increasing the intercultural competences of the partners from a theoretical and methodological point of view by sharing our working experiences and interdisciplinary studies. As trainers, we reached a more complex and enriched European perspective on the intercultural issues, which helped us translating in training curricula and toolkit the European guidelines that aim at promoting intercultural dialogue and intercultural competences among European citizens. Thanks to the updated intercultural training courses, this project allowed all the partners to enrich their training experience.
The six partners of the Zelda project applied for this project to share and make common heritage the experience gained in over twenty years in different European countries on the front of intercultural training for education professionals, specifically through the use of the approach to intercultural relations promoted and tested by the psycho-sociologist Margalit-Cohen Emerique. The ZELDA project aims to address intercultural trainers working in the social, education and health sectors, professional educators working in social services, child protective services, in the juvenile justice field and in recreational public spaces, adult teachers working with migrants both in formal and unconventional schooling contexts. Other groups addressed by the project will be migrant parents, young migrants and volunteers working with migrants in centres for first assistance and health-care services. Professionals working on the field often go through misunderstandings, cultural shocks and violent conflicts because of the different cultural frameworks and scale of values they act. When migrants and professionals working with them live these cultural shocks, they feel vulnerable, angry and disoriented.