CONSORTIUM The Taste of Harmony consortium consists of adult education providers from five European countries: • VHS Hannover, municipal adult education centre (DE) • Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih Dante – public adult education school, Rijeka (HR) • The Rural Hub CLG, a non-profit NGO specialised in education, Carrickmacross (IR) • Dorea Educational institute, a non-profit NGO in the field of adult education, Limassol (CY) • Enjoy Italy, adult education enterprise, Marcellinara (Calabria, IT) OBJECTIVES The project aims to contribute to a measurable and visible improvement of: • Intercultural dialogue through sharing cultural/personal stories and meaning embedded in recipes • Key digital competences (content creation, communication, and security) related to sharing recipes and personal stories • Societal integration of foreign-born (expats, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees) adult members of the local community • Online and face-to-face interaction of native-born and foreign-born adult members of local communities in partner countries RESULTS The partners are proposing to develop the following intellectual outputs in order to accomplish the set project aims: Blended Learning Course: Presenting Your Culinary Traditions in Digital Media (IO1) - Blended learning for native-born and foreign-born (expats, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees) adult members of the local community based on a digital and intercultural approach. E-learning Platform: What’s Cooking? (IO2) Will be used to carry out the online portion of IO1 – where the online interactive activities for IO1 will be created. The piloting of the IO1 will be based on a practical and interactive training approach and tools in order to ensure proper adaptation to the specific learning and communication needs of learners. Bite-Sized Learning Units (IO3): The project partners will create and publish a series of short learning activities to develop intercultural awareness and communicative competence in working age population (15-64) in their countries. A total of 50 learning units (10 per partner) averaging 1-3 minutes in length will be developed in the form of text, images, audio, video, and tests to raise awareness of and better equip citizens for intercultural dialogue. Online Radio Show “A Taste of Home” (IO4): The project partners will create and publish a series of online radio show episodes (podcasts) to foster the use of food and recipes as facilitators of cultural bridging between foreign-born and native-born community members in their countries. Each partner will record and produce 6 podcasts of 30-60 minutes in length, by inviting foreign-born adult members of the local community and talking with them about food, cuisine, and food-related traditions. Out of the 6 episodes, 4 will be recorded in English and 2 in the partner's national language. Training Programme for Adult Education Professionals: Fostering Intercultural Communication (IO5) will be created in order to support the delivery of the developed outputs (IO1 and IO2) and ensure a quality training outcome is achieved. This training programme will place particular emphasis on working with non-traditional learning approaches and will explore the different roles that educators are required to adopt when working in blended learning environments. This training will also address some key considerations when working with foreign-born adults (expats, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees) as well as working with diverse learner groups to maintain effective intercultural communication and positive atmosphere in learning environments. IMPACT The main expected impacts at the end of the project will include: • 60 members of local communities in 5 countries that will participate in an intensive process of societal integration and digital competence development via the pilot courses • 10 educators from 5 countries that will take part in a 3-day training event to enable them to implement courses following the IO1 model (blended learning, working with diverse learner groups, supporting development of small-scale local intercultural initiatives) • 170 experts from external organisations at multiplier events in the 5 countries that will have been made familiar with the achievements of the project and have discussed its results • 6000 total (5000 + 1000) engagements (views, shares, likes, clicks, downloads) of citizens in the 5 countries with the short learning activities (IO3) and foreign-born individuals’ personal stories presented in the radio episodes (IO4) developing their intercultural competence and understanding The project will also have positive results for the participating organisations since project partners will improve their in-person and digital training approaches, strengthen their cooperation with the relevant lifelong learning institutions in their regions and countries as well as relevant stakeholders in other countries, contributing to their internationalisation.
The project was created to contribute to a measurable and visible improvement of: • Intercultural dialogue through sharing cultural/personal stories and meaning embedded in recipes • Key digital competences (content creation, communication, and security) related to sharing recipes and personal stories • Societal integration of foreign-born (expats, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees) adult members of the local community • Online and face-to-face interaction of native-born and foreign-born adult members of local communities in partner countries
The EU has placed integration high on its political agenda, investing into education programmes to facilitate integration of foreign-born individuals into overall population. But adaptation to a new culture and a new environment presents a stressful time for foreign nationals. Hence it is not unexpected that foreign-born individuals need a special approach and help in order to be able to engage in positive, friendly social contact with local-born adult members of the local community. The issue of creating authentic intercultural dialogue is one that crosses national borders and requires a joint effort. To overcome these obstacles, in this project we developed a set of creative, and engaging resources and materials. Since adult education presents a wide target area and a diverse profile of learners, a variety of perspectives is needed to tackle the many variables at play. The core idea of Taste of Harmony is bringing people from different cultures together around the kitchen table and let them share their experience around cooking and cuisine (a topic everybody loves to speak about). Taste of Harmony combines this with various opportunities for adult learners to start creative processes using modern tools of mass communication.