Hard to Believe!- Religious Diversity Seminar was a 6-days seminar implemented in Luxembourg in end of August 2013. The idea for the seminar was created by partner organizations from 7 countries: Luxembourg, Poland, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Estonia and Czech Republic, representing different religions or non-religious communities willing to discuss religion as important element of intercultural dialogue.
The seminar goal was to address the religious diversity and discrimination issues that are becoming increasingly pertinent in European society. Using interactive and participatory methods it dealt effectively with general prejudice and discrimination and sought to provide adult educators, teachers and volunteers with tools for situations, where religious diversity and discrimination are a concern.
Religious dialogue and understanding are a part of the intercultural education, which we consider, that is often less elaborated and discussed. Recent events and experiences have shown that multicultural understanding and respect is essential, and they also showed how easy it is to affect the peace and create the massive events that disturb the societies and contribute to building the barriers. By being part of Europe, where different religions and cultures co-exist it means that mutual understanding and tolerance has to be created.
One of the main concerns of the youth work nowadays is the racism, non-tolerance and xenophobia and it often has to do with the individual understanding and attitudes of religion. Non-formal education could have a strong influence to change that situation and this is why we come up with the idea of this project. The project gave the opportunity to discuss and debate several important issues that normally do not exist in the formal systems of education. It give to the participants the chance for individual reflection about beliefs, cultural reflection about role of the religion in their country, connection to tradition and the way it is practiced in their own circles.
At the same time it will allow participants to share that reflection in small groups and on plenaries, where they will mix with people from different countries. Overall the participants also had a chance to interact with and listen to the inputs of experts who will connect the topic of religion to the challenges of youth work and intercultural learning.
We believe we achieved the main aims of the project:
– creation of the respect and curiosity for the religious diversity
– contribution to the understanding between cultures and intercultural learning
– promotion of the values, skills and anti-discriminative attitude towards the religious diversity in youth work
Also we believe that we achieved the main objectives of the project:
– raising awareness of participants that each individual has specific religious identity
