Tolerance today is synonymous with multiculturalism. It means to accept and embrace other races, religions, and ideas without prejudice or judgment. Tolerance also means respecting others for their differences whether they are race differences, religious differences or even socioeconomic differences.
As the title already suggests, migration offers chances and challenges. The participating schools plan to draw students’ attention to the high value of cultural diversity, to raise the young people’s awareness of the importance of tolerance towards migrants, and also to invite students, who are either offspring of migrants or migrants themselves, to integrate themselves into the societies in which they now live. Integration does not mean to give up or lose one’s own cultural identity. It means to also learn about the culture a person lives in.
A migration background can be very stimulating and enriching, if both sides make the best of it. The participating schools all have students with migration background, who will later on work in our economies. They can become a bridge between the culture they live in now and the culture they migrated from – thus enabling connections and facilitating understanding between the cultures.
Children are brought into the world without biases or prejudices. Yet along the path to adulthood many children adopt values and beliefs from their peers and the adults in their life. Teaching tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism helps children broaden their awareness and acceptance. It helps create a more harmonious world for ever.
Our project addresses a common lack of awareness of the culture of ” others”, prejudices and stereotypes against them which leads to social exclusion and early school leaving. Schools across Europe are seeing a rise in the number of children born and raised in a different country. This can place strain on language teaching capacity and many immigrant children lag behind in academic achievement. In fact, students born outside the EU are twice as likely to leave school early. At the same time, increased diversity is an opportunity to make schools more inclusive, creative and open-minded.
The main aim of this specific project is to promote respect, diversity and acceptance of ” others”.The project will encourage and teach pupils how to work corroboratively with pupils from other countries, in a non-formal learning environment, explore different concepts of civic rights and responsibility in the purpose to learn to uphold the rights and freedoms of individuals and communities and to become aware of a European sense of citizenship and tolerance, and to gain valuable life-skills.
Through the activities the students will first learn how to identify themselves , then face prejudices and stereotypes and finally overcome them. This will be a challenge for students to understand how they react when faced with cultural behavior different from their own.
The project will help pupils ;
– to raise awareness of the effects of our own behavior on others
– to see how other cultures have left and still leave footprints on our society today, and how this affects our understanding of diversity
– to learn from differences and see them as a positive thing
– to define themselves and see others as unique people
– to discuss what means a single person in society or a pupil in a class has of defeating problems of intolerance
– to learn about history, cultural changes and the reasons for immigration
– to acknowledge the importance of foreign language learning as a way to get access to other cultures, people and countries, and as a way to achieve better international understanding
– to look for information using ICTs
– to promote tolerance towards people of other nationalities, religion or races and towards the elderly people.
– to stimulate creativity
– to work in groups collaborating and being responsible of their individual tasks
– to show respect towards other people’s culture and opinions.
The intension is to create an environment where all members will be capable of recognizing prejudice and discriminatory behavior in themselves, and where students will be capable of exercising critical thinking and work toward an inclusive school environment.
Emphasis will be given to the active participation of students in every single step during the project and their energetic involvement so as the values to be gained will remain as lifelong skills.
Pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas and disadvantaged students will be especially encouraged to participate in the project. Inclusion of pupils from different backgrounds is very important.
Our aim is that pupils will become more open-minded and interested in other cultures through the experiences gained in the project
We hope that they will make use of the good opportunities offered by the European Union and become mature “European” citizens with and understanding of European and global issues
The focus of our project is to fulfill and implement the EU key competence in order to promote:
-Fighting poverty and social exclusion in the “Lisbon decade”
-Combating poverty and promoting active inclusion via peer reviews
– Europe 2020 and the fight against poverty and social exclusion
-The new tool-kit for tackling poverty and social exclusion
– Improving pupils’ knowledge regarding Convention on the Rights of the Child
– Council Directive 200/43/EC of 29 June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin
In 2001, UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
The aim is to:
• help young people live and work in diverse communities
• develop a cohesive socially just society
• understand the importance of human rights and the consequences of intolerance and discrimination, and how to challenge these
• understand the factors that influence and change places and communities such as migration, economic inequality and conflicts
• be able to explore others’ perspectives on cultural contentious issues
In June 2010 education ministers of Europe agreed on a framework for coherent, comprehensive, and evidence-based policies to tackle early school leaving. They will work together and exchange best-practices and knowledge on effective ways to address early school leaving. In March 2012 the Commission organised a conference on policies to reduce early school leaving. One year later, policy developments on early school leaving in EU countries were reviewe.
As school, we support these studies and participate in survey on Early School Leaving done by Education department of Bayrampaşa Directorate of National Education in cooperation with University of Bahçeşehir.
The main concepts of the project are the sensitization to the idea of “other people” and reflection on one’s own intercultural identity.
By studying closely the movement of people within Europe and by coming into direct contact with the immigrants, who have spent prolonged period of time away from their homeland we aim to develop an understanding of the intercultural dimension in European societies and help pupils better understand the reality and decide whether we are moving towards greater integration.
We will focus on arising awareness for preventing the biggest obstacles faced in “living together” – the racism and xenophobia.
We believe that our project is compatible with EU youth policy in attempt to develop young people’s spirit of entrepreneurship. The increased environmental and common cultural awareness in participants as well as in local communities, will contribute to young people to develop their personalities. The project provides equal opportunities for young girls and boys to learn cooperating with people from different ethnic origin, religion and belief.
The main target group of this action is students that are the owners of future. That is why all our activities are student oriented and can be only accomplished with their participation. The aim of the these activities is to enable the students gain knowledge and abilities that they can use in future. The teaching of morals and values is a common issue since the educational systems were created. Nowadays it seems we have a call for returning to a curriculum that explicitly addresses moral or character education in the purpose to stem the increase in violent and anti-social behavior which is due, in part, to the “de-moralizing” of our schools and society. We believe that our participation in the program, beyond the enforcement of our European identity and the cultivation of a multicultural perspective, will enlarge our educational background knowledge, will help us all create a better cultural, linguistic and emotional context, which will give us the opportunity to enrich our creativity standards and will add an European dimension to our citizenship.
Who is knocking at my door? Our Erasmus+ project 