DayCul (Daily Culture)- Act Daily, Think Interculturally - Training Course on Cultural Diversity and Intercultural learning from daily life perspective

In specific, exploring Religion, Traditions, Food, Music, Languages, Communication patterns, Relations, Time, Personal culture, Relation towards other cultures, Power issues, Gender Roles in society and all the other things that shape our everyday life (behaviour, identity, beliefs, values and rules) and all of them are deeply rooted in our culture. By acknowledging the importance of culture in everyday life and understanding that these set of regulations differ from group to group that one belongs to, participants will understand that these topics are essence of intercultural learning and are important part of becoming sensitive to cultural differences. For the sake of comprehending obstacles (stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and violence) that occur during intercultural dialogue and finding possibilities for overcoming these problems, one first has to understand one’s own culture. Aim The training course aims at developing the intercultural competencies of youth workers and leaders in organizing international youth projects through exploration of cultural diversity beyond simulations, from a perspective of real everyday life and use of it as a tool to discover identity (become aware of your own culture so that you can open to others who are different). Analytically the course aims: • to support youth workers and youth leaders to develop the intercultural competencies when organizing international youth projects through exploration of cultural diversity from a perspective of real everyday life • to promote the inclusion of people with disadvantaged backgrounds, especially newly arrived migrants, in response to critical events affecting European countries • to challenge participant’s capacity to use very different cultural environment as a tool to discover identity (become aware of your own culture so that you can open to others who are different) • to acknowledge among participants the importance that influence of culture has on person’s perception of reality, everyday behaviour and identity • to introduce participants with the approaches and activities of intercultural learning and possibilities to adapt it to their local contexts and realities; • to provide information about existing possibilities and conditions for the development of European youth co-operation projects, with special focus on the Youth in Action Programme; • to exchange best practices among youth workers in working within multicultural groups - Methodology The methodology that is going to be used is specific to non formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs with a creative approach (“Cook-Telling Story-Lab”, “Blind Dancers”, Photovoice*) to phenomena of culture and cultural diversity from the perspective of everyday life. Unique methodological characteristic is practical implementation of knowledge gathered throughout the first 3 days of the training course where participants have a chance to use local environment as a setting to explore in the next 2 days specific aspects close to their interest related to the topic of the training course. The products of these explorations will be presented through various media tools. This direction was taken to enable participants to work on the specific topic of the training from a very personal perspective, proposing and choosing elements on which to work and implement.