“Building a future” – Cultural Intelligence: The Essential Intelligence for the 21st Century Erasmus Project

Project Title

“Building a future” – Cultural Intelligence: The
Essential Intelligence for the 21st Century

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Context:
Culture is the fundamental building block of identity and the development of a strong cultural identity
is essential to children’s healthy, sense of who they are and where they belong.The main idea behind
the project is to develop awareness among children from an early age that diversity in our world
make us culturally richer.
In our country in 2017 year we realized an exploration with a goal to assess the children development
according to the standards of early education and development as unbreakable tie from the national
program in the kindergartens.The results has shown that the children from the marginalized families
are having lower results in these measurements.One of the reasons beside the lower level of the
parents conscious for active inclusion in the kindergarten is also the inappropriate approach of the
teachers,by their different cultural identity.That is why there is a need for enhancement the
competences of the teachers to work with children with different cultural and ethnic background as
well as program enhancement with contents that will contribute to the children to develop empathy,
altruism and assertiveness.
Kindergartens from Croatia and Bulgaria also include children of different cultural backgrounds and
need to exchange good practices in this domain of action.
Kindergartens from Italy and Portugal have developed a range of strategies and activities that will
enable us to make better changes in our program.
We, primary school teachers, want to learn from each other, present our success stories and our challenges and work together to make a difference in our schools and communities.
The main goal of the project is cooperation in the field of acquaintance and implementation of
methods and forms of developing basic skills for children in the social-emotional domain using the
cultural diversity in the European world. Participants will seek innovative solutions, new forms and
methods of work which develop Positive Learning Outcomes in children such a: strong sense of
identity, confident and involved learners, effective communicators. By promoting understanding of
difference and diversity, early childhood educators will gain skills for teaching strategies and
techniques which will help them to be more successful in assisting children and their families in
building positive relationships among each others, with their peers and with their local
communities.Objectives:
– To help teachers identify their basic knowledge about cultural diversity and to provide them with
practical strategies to improve performance when working across cultures.
– To encourage staff to improve their cultural intelligence and to provide them with tools for working
more effectively with children from different cultural backgrounds
-To provide the KG teachers with strategies and tips for creating an inclusive classroom environment
and teaching a culturally diverse population of children.
Good practices will be put on paper and we will develop a Guide for educators with game-based activities (а toolkit for early childhood educators on cultural diversity and responding to prejudice) and Materials for parents with tips for encouraging they child to understand and appreciate the different cultures.
We and our partners want our kindergartens to be more socially inclusive by respecting the
differences of all the children, where all the children are feeling valued and their basic needs are met.
Our main goals are:
– improving the approach of the children and their families from the marginalized groups in the
program for early child development
-improving the ability, opportunity and dignity of the those children who are disadvantage on the
basis of their identity.
NUMBER AND PROFILE OF THE PARTICIPANTS
Children: indirect 80 X 5=400 total: 400
Teachers: Direct 25 X 5=125 indirect 13 X 5=65 total:190
Administrative Staff: 2 X 5=10
Families: 150
Local Community: 100
Activities:
C 1 – Including cultural diversity in our setting’s practices( curriculum)
C2-C4- Including cultural diversity in our day-to-day practices( classroom management);Developing a
Guide for educators with game-based activities
C 5- Celebrating different cultures( building partnership with diverse families) Developing Materials for parents with tips for encouraging they child to understand and appreciate the different cultures.
Impact:
All the partners will use the Multicultural Education lessons uploaded on the online platform during the project and after its completion, which means that the material basis of the kindergarten/school will improve. Teachers can develop new courses for children using the materials produced during the project.
The project will also involve the development of the human resource training, which is beneficial both in the short and in the long run. Teachers will develop professional relationships with their colleagues from other European countries and they will have the chance to develop future project ideas.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 140250 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kindergarten Srnicka & Country: MK

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas de Valadares
• Istituto Comprensivo G. Nosengo
• Tselodnevna Detska Gradina “Parvi Iuni”
• Djecji vrtic Djecji svijet