After the Training of Trainers in Intercultural Citizenship Education (Cyprus, 2019) and following the Anna Lindh Foundation’s dissemination goal, Fotoessa held the first intercultural activity in the community of Anavyssos city in Attica region, Greece, on September 2020.
The activity focused on the subject of “Identity and diversity” and was organized and facilitated by Fotoessa’s certified ToT member, Aspasia Protogerou. The community activity aimed to address the complexity and diversity of people’s identity and to pinpoint the mutliculturality of each individual. The target audience was a group of 13 participants, women from 17 to 65 years old, from different social, financial and educational backgrounds, all coming from the same community. Activities were inspired from the Anna Lindh Education Handbook on Intercultural Citizenship in the Euro-Mediterranean Region. The participants didn’t have any previous experience in Intercultural Citizenship Education and the activity has offered them space to express themselves, to freely interact with each other and to explore common personal grounds, aspirations and values through entertaining and interactive tasks. At the end of the activity these common values (such as freedom of expression, understanding, solidarity, acceptance of diversity etc) were all gathered on a board and then it became obvious that these were all core values of Intercultural Citizenship Education and Dialogue
Overall, people participated vividly, expressed themselves freely and shared feelings and some fiery and passionate exchange of views, deriving from their personal experiences and perceptions. Evaluation and remarks received were positive but it was made clear that the intercultural dialogue, covering such a vast ground, needs consistent communication and interaction initiatives among community members and civil society stakeholders. Such activities definitively stimulate, create and also monitor positive changes in people’s mindset in the long run, spreading their positive impact to the social groups these people interact with.
