Eurochange Childrenr's Handbook (Eng)

Eurochange
Children's Handbook

Children inspiring children to become agents of change for a child-friendly multicultural Europe

Project No. 2018-1-CY01-KA201-046877

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

EUROCHANGE Children’s Handbook

Table of Contents

Introduction
What is the EUROCHANGE project about?
The EUROCHANGE activities

A child-friendly multicultural Europe
What is a child-friendly multicultural Europe?
What is cultural diversity?
What is cultural heritage?

The EUROCHANGE methodology
How children may inspire other children?
What skills do you need to inspire other children?

Collaborative art-making
Getting started
My goals
Suggested activities

Introduction

What is the EUROCHANGE project about?

The EUROCHANGE project is to empower children to act as agents for building a child-friendly multicultural Europe. This project aims to support all children’s (native, minority, migrant, and refugee) social inclusion and their sense of belonging to a common European space by drawing upon the concept of the diversity of our European cultural heritage – at EU, national, regional and local levels.

This project is innovative because it uses the children-inspiring-other-children approach. It aims to get the participating children to develop activities, resources and materials for other children, and motive other children to participate in activities, both in their own local context, but also in broader European physical and virtual communities in order to meet the above-mentioned goals. The project uses new technologies, and innovative and creative methodologies, such as collaborative art-making, intercultural online pedagogy, and collaborative story-telling

Introduction

The EUROCHANGE activities

On the basis of the “children-inspiring-children methodological tool”, the EUROCHANGE project will develop resources and activities for both teachers and children for promoting social inclusion by cherishing the diversity of our cultural heritage. All the developed electronic resources and activities are, extremely inclusive (they are easily accessible for any target group, including people of migrant or refugee origin). The activities and resources produced will consist of three topics:

(1) collaborative art-making;
(2) collaborative story-telling and poetry
(3) online intercultural pedagogy.

A child-friendly multicultural Europe

What is a child-friendly multicultural Europe?

A child-friendly multicultural Europe is to support all children’s (native, minority, migrant, and refugee) social inclusion and their sense of belonging to a common European space by drawing upon the concept of the diversity of our European cultural heritage - at EU, national, regional and local levels.

What is cultural diversity?

Cultural diversity highlights the dynamic nature of cultures, which are an unstable mixture of not only sameness but also otherness.
It suggests familiarising with the principles of democracy, mutual-understanding, and authentic interest in understanding of other cultures, humanitarian accountability of self and others and concern for marginalised groups within and beyond society.

A child-friendly multicultural Europe

What is cultural heritage?

According to the EU, cultural heritage has both a tangible and intangible, natural and digital, world and culturally diverse character. We focus on the definition of our cultural heritage that surrounds us in the buildings of our cities, our landscapes and archaeological and digital sites. It is preserved not only in literature, art and objects but also in craft skills, stories, food and films.

According to UNESCO, cultural heritage is defined across four axes, namely:
1.World Heritage,
2.Intangible Heritage,
3.Cultural Diversity, and
4.Underwater Heritage

The EUROCHANGE methodology

How children may inspire other children?
The children-inspiring-children methodology is a peer training methodology to be developed under the supervision of a teacher/trainer, where children teach and learn from each other, with the objective of achieving learning outcomes that promote and foment the diversity and the multiculturalism of Europe.
The EUROCHANGE children-inspiring-children methodology will centre in developing learning outcomes through three different types of activities:
- Collaborative art-making;
- Online intercultural pedagogy;
- Collaborative story-telling.

What skills do you need to inspire other children?
- Empathy
- Strength through Diversity
- Inclusion
- Learner-centred
- Interactivity
- Constructivism
- Collaboration
- Guidance

Collaborative art-making

Getting started

Collaborative art-making entails children’s collaborative work in order to achieve a common goal within their art group, while learning to share their thoughts (i.e. on stereotypes, diversity and democracy) and emotions, and use critical thought to go into the others’ emotions.
Collaborative art-making may be used as an innovative and more creative research method to examine children’s everyday life, experiences, and social interactions within schools. In such a method, children should become co-interpreters of their art creations by being encouraged to comment upon them.

My goals

•Promote children’s interaction with children of other cultures. Languages, religions, and other characteristics (i.e. disabilities, minorities and other vulnerable groups).
•Form peer groups within which children interact freely, sharing their cultures and their knowledge of other cultures with each other.
•Increase the school and social participation of children who appear to be marginalised.
•Promote intercultural dialogue as a main instrument for social inclusion.

Collaborative art-making

•Promote children’s understanding, not only of their diversity, but also of their commonalities.
•Stimulate children to identify ‘enriching differences’ on an individual/local/national level.
•Stimulate children’s perceptions that diversity can be an asset.
•Promote children’s empathy with the others by examining diverse perspectives.
•Promote the values upon which equality is built upon.
•Fostering a sense of European Union ownership and sense of European identity, based on common values, history and culture.
•Fostering knowledge and understand of the values/ideas/symbols/monuments that might be regarded as our shared European cultural heritage (such the European flag, the Euro, iconic monuments in European capital cities, our nature beauties, European keywords etc.).
•Promoting children’s active citizenship.
•Promoting education for human rights.

Suggested activities
“A weekend together”
“My Story”
“A European collage”