Peace Dialogue Campus Network: Fostering Positive Attitudes between Migrants and Youth in Hosting Societies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Peace Dialogue Campus Network: Fostering Positive Attitudes between Migrants and Youth in Hosting Societies

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Over the past years, the Eurasian landscape has witnessed unprecedented levels of international migration. The UN statistics estimate that the number of international migrants globally reached 272 million in 2019, an increase of 51 million since 2010. Currently, international migrants comprise 3.5% of the global population, compared to 2.8% in the year 2000, according to new estimates released by the United Nations (https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/international-migrant-stock-2019.html).

The main objective of this project is to foster a more peaceful generation in Europe and in Turkey that approaches migrants with positive attitudes. The project aims to enhance social, civic and intellectual competencies recognized as effective tools to prevent and tackle discrimination, radicalism and racism, and to promote social inclusion through intercultural communication, interaction and empathy.

The project aims to achieve this objective via an international peace dialogue campus network of university students, led by 29 “Peace Envoys” trained through rigorous academic preparation, experiential education and leadership development. The Peace Envoys are composed of students coming from different disciplines at the partner universities.

Three boot camps were organized in Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Bologna, designed in topics crucial to peacebuilding e.g. intergroup contact, stereotypes and prejudices, social inclusion, inequality and social justice, European citizenship, project cycle management and so on. The Peace Envoys have been assigned with the task of creating peace dialogue students’ clubs in their home universities, which will finally become a “Peace Dialogue Campus Network”, recruit and pass on their knowledge to other students to become peacemakers, and implement their own inclusion projects on their campuses and/or in their cities. Their projects in Istanbul, Gaziantep, Bologna, Berlin and Rotterdam have all been successful, with most of them reaching out beyond the borders of the university campuses.

The Project has produced 4 Intellectual Outputs; Need Analysis, Strategy Paper, Online Course Curriculum and Train-the-trainer Camp Tool Kit for Peace Envoys, and Peace Dialogue Campus Network Best Practice Guide (Best Practice Guide for University Students on How to Design Your Own Social Inclusion Project). All the outputs are open-access resources available to students, scholars and the general public via the project website.

The Need Analysis and Strategy Paper were prepared based on an extensive literature review and analysis of the historical and current situation of migration to the countries of the project partners and policies developed over the years by authorities. They aim to identify the prejudice and discrimination level between migrants and natives in cities of the partner universities, by conducting surveys for three different target audiences; native students, migrant students and migrants who are at university age, but do not have access to university. The surveys were conducted in 7 languages; Turkish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic, via online tools (Qualtrics) and face-to-face interviews.

The online course “How to stop discrimination and enhance cultural dialogue” was designed and developed as a self-learning open class course to pursue the goals and promote the fundamentals of the PEACEMAKERS project. Assessment is provided across the topics for self-learners and a set of assessments for those who want to get ECTS was created. The methodology, a proposed topic timeline is available, topic tasks are presented, the resources included, and a syllabus focused on the main subjects of the project’s three boot camps. The outputs of the Project are all included in the course which will make them available to a broader interested public.

This “Best Practice Guide for University Students on How to Design Your Own Social Inclusion Project” is prepared for university students planning to start a social inclusion project. A step-by-step approach guides the way to a successful social inclusion student project that will raise awareness in their circles and attract others to get onboard. The PEACEMAKERS Project is taken as a case study. The details of the Peace Envoys’ projects and best practices are gathered in this guide. Peace Envoys from all partner universities, as well as other universities in the world, will be able to use this guide as a resource to develop new projects in the future.

The impact of the project was threefold: First, it educated the Peace Envoys who can share their knowledge with their fellow students and friends; second, the general public was informed about people with a migrant background, their situation and personal histories through enhanced intercultural dialogue, intergroup contact and communication, which reduce stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination; third, stakeholders have learned about and from the project results.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 159710 Eur

Project Coordinator

KOC UNIVERSITY & Country: TR

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDADE ABERTA
• GAZIANTEP UNIVERSITESI
• ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
• HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITAET ZU BERLIN
• ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA