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Youth for Tolerance

2020-3-SK02-KA105-0026382020Youth mobilityfinalizedGood practice
Countries: SK|PL|BG|MK|ES|RO|TR|HR · Grant: €44,854
Creativity and cultureMigrants' issuesInclusion - equity

Objectives

One of the main principles of the European Union is respect for its diversity. The history of Europe shows the importance of protecting national minorities and allowing different religious, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identities. EU needs to operate in an increasingly globalized world. Moving information, people, goods, and capital across borders are faster and cheaper than ever before. Embracing rather than resisting diversity can bring enormous benefits. (A Guide to European Diversity). As we can dedicate from these findings, social circles of Europeans are becoming increasingly diverse. Because of this, it is evident that acceptance of diversity is important for our society, but as we can see in the findings, discrimination is still a widespread problem, which needs to be addressed to prevent social exclusion of discriminated groups that often leads to increased violence, resulting in wars and conflicts. It is clear that people need to change their negative opinions about other countries. Based on the fact that people nowadays are highly influenced by media and other means of promotion, we can assume that one of the most effective ways to promote tolerance is through different types of promotion itself - both online (such as social media, blogs, etc.) and offline (such as flashmobs, public events). We wanted to use the power of online and offline promotions to make an impact in our local societies for tolerance. Considering all these facts, we decided to carry out the "Youth For Tolerance" Erasmus+ youth exchange project. Our aim of the project was to increase tolerance between people from different cultures and fight against prejudices by using different types of online and offline means of promotion. The project hosted 2 mobility events in 2 different countries (4-13 July 2022 in Slovakia and 2-10 October 2022 in Turkey). The first mobility event took place in Galanta, Slovakia and the second mobility event took place in Kocaeli, Turkey. By doing this, participants got to know 2 countries with totally different cultures and religions, which enabled them to experience diversity first-hand, better reflect on it and became more tolerant towards the differences. The first mobility in Slovakia gathered 42 participants and the second in Turkey gathered 38 participants from 8 partner countries (Slovakia, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Spain, Poland, Romania, and The Republic of North Macedonia) from diverse backgrounds. Our objectives in Youth For Tolerance project were; Objectives of the project are: • raising awareness among young people on the problem of discrimination; • Provide opportunities for networking and partnerships between young people, youth workers and organizations in partner countries; • increasing mutual understanding, solidarity and tolerance between young people from different cultural contexts and backgrounds through working in a multicultural environment; • introducing participants to the potential of media to influence people ́s opinions and find ways how to use it to promote tolerance and fight against discrimination; • empowering participants to act on increasing tolerance by using different means of both online and offline promotion; • promoting active citizenship of young people in their society and EU; • developing project planning and organizational skills of participants; • promoting opportunities for young people in the Erasmus+ program and non-formal education and motivating young people to take part in future projects; • giving participants the ability to work in a group and to cooperate. The activities of the youth mobility events were based on non-formal education (learning by doing), through which the participants had the opportunity to learn how to effectively promote tolerance between people. The main event of the Youth Exchange was organizing a cultural event for the local community, which focused on the promotion of tolerance (but also the project and Erasmus+ program itself) among our local communities. During these events, our participants planned and performed a cultural program and also presented their creative project outputs (such as videos and photos), which they created during the first mobility event in Slovakia.

Project partners (9)