ENRICHING THE UNITY WITH CULTURAL DIVERSITY

The project has been founded due to our great interest in developing the topic “diversity” that some time ago we worked on an etwinning project ID 273865. As the main objective, we seek to help st...

The project has been founded due to our great interest in developing the topic “diversity” that some time ago we worked on an etwinning project ID 273865. As the main objective, we seek to help students to work on different aspects of diversity focusing on some points such as Religion, migration, racism, stereotypes, and gender equality, and how these topics are influencing different aspects of our cultures. We wanted our students and target groups would break stereotypes and become more tolerant and open-minded by knowing other cultures so that they would be able to see that we are similar never mind how different we are. Our needs as organizations are showing our students the outer world so they can live themselves the diversity in different cultures, and how other same-aged children in the world live their lives. By sharing their time with foreign teenagers they will learn new costumes, and new ways of living. Sometimes when they learn about other cultures in books they think we are so different and some of them reject others just because things differ from theirs and find it annoying to come out of their comfort. But on the other hand, some others feel curious and want to explore all they have read about by meeting others.

All the activities implemented in our project were related to diversity in culture, religion, music, art, migration, and refugees. We implemented all the activities written in the project.

Through the implemented activities and throughout the whole project we were able to see how students discovered a new world for them. Not only them but also their families, educational community, and local authorities have been able to see how other nationalities, other cultures, and other religions are not so different from ours. They have been able to break the stereotypes they had about these other cultures and especially about other religions such as Muslim. By giving the students the opportunity to live and share every day with host families has given them other points of view about life. They have established close relationships with each other. Students felt as if they were one member more of the family and the hosts felt the students as if they had a new member. They have got to know each others culture, they had the opportunity to practice other languages and learn some of the most important words to understand each other when sharing moments together. They have understood better some of the traditions and why they are like this. They have been surprised by some of the ways of living and values in a family and schools. What are the differences and similarities between our education, our food, religious rituals etc.