MOOC - Minorities as opportunity and occasion for chrysalis

Rationale of the project

Consistent migration flow toward Europe are challenging all European and National societies with new intercultural challenges.
An example of such challenges is the fact that in the new Erasmus+ guide, it is mentioned the need to prepare teachers to work with and in intercultural classes.
But the need of intercultural approaches and interculturally oriented working methodologies affects not only the educational system. All sectors of European society are and will be always more affected by such a need. What about youth workers, doctors, lawyers, social workers, law enforcement officers?
At the same time every day and watching the news from different sides of Europe (migrants shot by Police in Macedonia, Austria building a wall at the border with Italy, etc) it is always more evident that a deep cultural work is to be done, in order to avoid that Europe become always more a fortress leaded by racist and violent policies.

The problem we see is related not only to migrants and intercultural-ethnic reality of Europe, but to the development of "fear of difference" and "refusal of difference" raising in different context in Europe.
This could be applied to the raising of Islamophobia and antisemitism in different countries, to the never ended racism and violence against Roma, to the refusal of recognizing cultural minorities of any kind.
The deep work to be done is, today more than ever, related to the need of recognizing the “other” as a source of mutual enrichment and not as a danger or an enemy.

Aim of the project

Final aim of the project is to develop some training material that can facilitate preparation of different professionals on dealing with intercultural issues in different context.
We want develop such a material with the characteristic of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) gathering together materials from different sources (video, books, training material) and to be made available for different kind of workers.

Activities of the project

1. Share of good practices implemented by public (mainly Universities and social services) bodies and private NGOs (mainly youth organizations)
This will be done by means of
a. An international seminar gathering together different stakeholders from participating countries
b. Some job-shadowing (individual mobility of youth workers or teachers or other professionals for short period to visit experiences in other countries)
2. Training course(s) on Educational methodologies within formal and non formal contexts with culturally mixed classes
3. Training course(s) for cultural mediators to be prepared to act in different working contexts (Public health system, law enforcement system, schools, social services, etc)
4. Development of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) with the training material gathered and developed during the project.

Partners identification

We are looking for partners who are interested in the topic and can share an already existing experience on intercultural education and/or can take a leading role in one or more of the activities described above.
In each country we would like to have at least one public and one private body involved. Public ones can be Universities or municipalities with already registered PIC.