Dealing with Diversity Erasmus Project

Project Title

Dealing with Diversity

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Inclusion – equity; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Partner institutions from the UK, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania got together to implement this project about inclusion and respect for diversity. All partner countries experience situations of intolerance (related to ethnic origin, sexual orientation, etc), especially among youths, and a lack of efficient strategies at national level to deal with it. With this project, partners, who are organisations working with youths at different levels, decided to come together and share methods and techniques in order to equip youth workers from the partner organisations with tools to promote respect for diversity among youth people and develop successful long term strategies to create a better society.

Project partners identified as target group educators and trainer working with youths. Each partner identified the needs of their target group to acquire new strategies to promote respect for diversity and social inclusion and, on the other hand, to share the strategies each partner is using, enhancing European experience to deal with cultural diversity.

The project aimed to develop a culture of diversity in order to facilitate the social inclusion of young people belonging to discriminated groups, such as ethnic minorities. The main objectives were the following:
1. To increase the professional development of each partner organization through European collaboration, through non-formal and intercultural learning for managing cultural diversity by means of 2 Short-term joint staff training events.
2. To create a project website containing information about the project, including videos of the activities carried out, which could serve as a point of reference or inspiration for members of the community who wish to use the tools provided in their daily activities with young people, to facilitate social inclusion of young people belonging to minorities.
3. To launch an awareness-raising campaign- Respect for Cultural Diversity

The objectives were achieved through:

– 2 Short-term joint staff training events during which the target groups of each partner learned, among other things, to use arts (drama, painting, dance) and sports (football, volleyball), and other activities (making bread) for developing a culture of diversity and to stimulate social inclusion of young people belonging to different minority groups.
– A project Website containing information about the project, including a section with Videos containing examples of the activities carried our, including best practices in non-formal learning- as a valuable tool for learning will be used by youth workers.
– Launching of an awareness raising campaign called Respect for Cultural Diversity. This campaign was first launched via a dedicated Facebook group, due to lockdown and the difficulty in organising public events in the partner countries. Each partner organised different activities in their country to promote diversity, such as flash mob in the UK, or a singing and dancing activity in Lithuania, and so on.
– Local activities with young people to implement the methods and techniques learned during the international training events.

The project had an impact on the staff of the partner organisations taking part in the trainings. They acquired skills and competences to be better prepared to train youth to develop o culture of diversity, to respect cultural diversity and to stand against intolerance, for social inclusion. Also, the project had a great impact on youth too. Through the activities they have become more capable to develop a culture of diversity, to respect people belonging to different cultural diversity groups, to stand against intolerance. Partner organizations also improved their professional capacity acquiring new strategies and practices to deal with cultural diversity as well as acquiring innovative methods of combating intolerance, so that youths can be more tolerant and more involved in lives of their communities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 37080 Eur

Project Coordinator

SIRIUS TRAINING CIC & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Association for Intercultural Dialogue
• MB “Efekto grupe”
• Balkanska Agenciya za Ustoychivo Razvitie