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Intercultural sensitivity is all around
Intercultural sensitivity is all around
Start date: Jan 1, 2015,
End date: Jul 1, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
Context of the project: nowadays interculturality is part of our everyday life and work. People who work with young people face with several challenges to be in a situation which based on cultural background and they don’t know how to react or don’t understand why they react how they react. Ambiguity is everywhere, among young people and between young person and youth worker. It is essential nowadays to develop and improve our intercultural competence with emphasis on intercultural sensitiveness because we don’t have to travel to another country to face with different culture, different cultures come to us, different cultures are around us. Milton J. Bennett made a fantastic theory called Developmental model of intercultural sensitiveness. The academic model can be adapted to youth work activities which gives opportunity for youth workers to support young people to understand each other’s and improve their abilities to function together.
The overall aim of the training course was to train youth workers, youth leaders, teachers, social workers, etc. on use the Milton J. Bennett model in their daily work and lives in order to improve their intercultural competence to work with different target groups e.g. minorities, immigrants, Roma young people, etc. 8 phases of the model have to be understood by youth workers and share methods, tools and techniques how they can support young people from different cultural background to reach the certain phase or go forward to the next phase in local level then invent new youth projects e.g. youth exchanges, EVS and trainings in order to improve intercultural competences of young people in European level according to the proposals of Erasmus +.
We had 30 participants: 2 trainers and 3 social workers from Hungary, 3 teachers from Finland, 2 professional youth workers and 2 volunteers from Turkey, 3 Romanians youth workers, 2 representatives of ONG from France, 5 young youth leaders from Croatia, 3 from Greece, 3 young youth leaders from Spain and 1 educator and 1 youth worker from Italy. Unfortunately the Maltese partner could not find participants for this TC, so we replaced missing people with participants from Finland, Turkey and Croatia.
Our training course was titled ”Intercultural sensitivity is all around ” – Training course on developmental model of intercultural sensitiveness and how it can be put into youth work practice in Recoaro Terme, Italy at 08 - 16 April 2015
The training course was learner-centred because first of all the people who work with young people having different cultural backgrounds had to be aware that how sensitive they are interculturally and how much they need to improve their intercultural competence. An experienced trainer team prepared participatory and creative methods of non – formal education through the phases of the model of Milton J. Bennett and youth workers could through all phases and made self – assessment regarding to their own intercultural competence with special focus on intercultural sensitiveness. Meanwhile they had to consider how they can support their target groups to go through these phases in their lives as well and share, exchange and invent methods, tools and techniques to develop and improve to reach or go further from the certain phase. The whole training course was aimed at putting the Developmental model of intercultural sensitiveness into local and European youth work practice.
Participants had created 4 definitions of tolerance. They shared 6 stories of acceptance from their lives. Discussed and worked on 9 proposals for inventing and adapting methods, tools and techniques in order to use the Developmental model in their youth work locally and European context. Setting up 17 project ideas for further cooperation and applied for 2 of them already for the 30 April 2015 deadline.