DIGITAL CULTURAL AMBASSADOR

The DICA project has been designed to develop new innovative tools to make a key contribution in the field of inter-cultural dialogue and loneliness. Both topics have been identified as priorities within the EU and national policy setting agenda. The EU Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage states "intercultural dialogue is essential for avoiding conflict and the marginalisation of citizens on the basis of their cultural identity," whilst on the theme of loneliness a recent survey from Statista pointing that about 33% of adults experienced feeling of loneliness worldwide. Those facts have been highlighted by the recent COVID-19 crisis. We recognise that all the people have something valuable to share and something worth celebrating and through sharing they enrich all members of society. The world of learning can make a significant positive contribution in coming up with practical solutions, so we have designed a project to creatively intertwine these two themes through engaging learners from a range of ethnic backgrounds, through training to enable them to build their presentation skills to share their cultural background as Digital Community Educators and then engage them in settings to raise understanding among stakeholders.

The overall project objective is to create a new innovative, creative and digital approach to enable project target group (people from diverse cultural backgrounds) to become Digital Cultural Ambassadors and Community Educators and use their acquired knowledge to positively contribute to intercultural dialogue in society, with specific focus on using digital platforms to raise awareness of Equality and Diversity and the same awareness raising among the local population, particularly those individuals who face loneliness in their daily life.

Through close collaboration the six partners with a track record of transnational experience did enact the following steps: • Design the Training Course to enable young people to become Digital Community Ambassadors with modules covering (i) What is culture, (ii) How to digitally share my culture, (iii) How to digitally present my culture (iv) Digital Presentation skills to engage an audience • Recruit in the partner countries eight participants from a range of at least four cultural backgrounds to pilot the designed training course. • Through training and partner support the participants progress to become Digital Community Ambassadors. Participants from each cultural group had to produce during the pilot training a one-page script introducing their culture. From those scripts, we did produce video content in six languages. They had been disseminated through My Green Training Box digital learning platform and those materials could be used by our target group in their digital Community Ambassador activities. • Digital Community Ambassadors are engaged in a range of digital settings to share their culture and raise awareness among their audience, which are drawn from the business community, Public sector, NGOs and individuals who are facing loneliness. With the latter group partners did facilitate on-going buddying for mutual benefit of project training course participants and individuals facing loneliness. • Develop a Portfolio of Audio and Video examples of Good Practice on the themes of the project which draws upon the project journey • Organize national and international digital knowledge parties hosted by the learner participants and attended stakeholders.

• Through the training, 48 adult learners have improved their digital and communication skills/levels of selfconfidence, awareness of and ability to share their cultural heritage and become more active citizens in their local community • From the results of the participants trainings, we did create 48 motion design videos in 6 languages (EN, FR, ES, PL, SW and DE) available on a specific learning management system to turn each participant own story into digital learning materials about inter-cultural dialogue • 335 participants participated in the evaluation of the digital training and LMS. The project can be developed further by intercultural working to create further digital materials.