INTERLINGUA Partners: British Council KulturKontakt, Austria The Romanian Ministry of Education.
Transcript of INTERLINGUA Partners: British Council KulturKontakt, Austria The Romanian Ministry of Education.
INTERLINGUA
Partners:
British Council
KulturKontakt, Austria The Romanian
Ministry of Education
Aims
• To raise young people’s awareness of the need to develop their intercultural and democratic citizenship competences that will help them to become active and responsible citizens of their societies and of wider Europe.
• To encourage participants to look at language education as an inherent part of education for intercultural dialogue and citizenship.
• To increase young people’s employability skills in the context of globalisation and work force mobility.
Background and Rationale
The project Interlingua is a demonstration of the British Council’s commitment to valuing mutuality and cultural diversity through active engagement in the debate about multilingualism (i.e. English and other languages). This area also highlights the goals and achievements that British Council shares with European and international institutions such as: UNESCO and the Council of Europe.
Context
The project was initiated as a result of:
• The evaluation of the achievements of British Council-Romania projects: Human rights and Language development and Education for Democratic Citizenship.
• A Gallup poll entitled ‘Being Young in Romania’ (2004)
• A BC commissioned survey on’ Perspectives on youth values in Romania’ (2006)
• The aims of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue – 2008 and the European Year for Creativity and Innovation – 2009
Process
School teams of students and teachers of English, German and Romanian (both as a mother tongue and as a second language) from six regions of Romania (Braila, Bucharest, Brasov, Constanta, Iasi and Odorheiu Secuiesc) work on developing intercultural and citizenship projects on a variety of topics:
• Ethnographic studies of local ethnic diversity
• Ethnic communities between tradition and modernity
• Studying abroad – cultural and educational challenges
• Multicultural Bucharest – a view from the outside
• Language and community development.
Russian Lipoven and Roma communities in the Braila region
Outputs
Training programmes on intercultural principles
Training programmes on project management
Training module on creative expressions in intercultural communication
Training programme on democratic citizenship
Teams of teachers and students with skills in intercultural learning and democratic citizenship
Projects that demonstrate young people's intercultural understanding
An Interlingua handbook of good practice and principles of intercultural learning projects (to be published March 2010)
www.britishcouncil.ro