How to improve teachers’ multicultural abilities and civic skills to promote the difference and contrast radicalism?
The training for trainers of project START THE CHANGE – Embracing differences through intercultural education and volunteering took place in Zagreb (Croatia) from 12 – 16 June 2017, with the participation of 20 professional trainers.
The main idea of this Training for Trainers (ToT) was to prepare each partner for a 5-day Training for Teachers in October 2017 that aims to enhance teachers’ intercultural capacities and civic competences in their teaching of controversial topics. One important aspect of the ToT was to share experiences, materials and tools related to the project’s focus: preventing radicalization among young people.
Organized by the project coordinator FFE, the working agenda successfully covered a myriad of topics linked with radicalization for a better consolidation of knowledge, enrichment of working approaches and personal engagement among all participants.
Topics such as identity, emotions, creativity, society, human rights, democracy, global goals, stereotypes and prejudices and media literacy were dealt with through workshops and experience-sharing sessions, where each partner could contribute according to its own expertise and experience.
At the end of the training, all trainers started thinking about how the materials, the good practices and the knowledge shared during the ToT can be adapted for the future Teachers training. All the partners have now four months to plan and organize this Training – which is going to be held in October – with approximately 30 participants in each country.
This will be a big step in the project to kick the next phase off: once teachers will acquire the START THE CHANGE method, they will share it with their students in all the participating schools. Thus, students will have new tools to implement a project at community level, becoming aware of the reality around them and creating an impact in their community life, preventing radicalism as well.
START THE CHANGE aims to fight the radicalization among young people, a process that has to start as soon as in the primary and secondary schools. In order to deal with this issue, START THE CHANGE will organize a large-scale coordinated action that foresees the participation of 40 schools, 110 teachers, and 2000 youngsters across 4 European countries.
The project partnership consists of four organizations around Europe:
- FFE – Forum for Freedom in Education (Coordinator, Croatia);
- Development Education Association (UK);
- Youth Centre Dravinje (Slovenia);
- Centro Per Lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci (Italy).
Take a look at the project website: startthechange.net.
For further information please contact Trang Dang at trang.dang@danilodolci.org.