“Policulturica: How to Organize the Fostering of Tolerance in School and Out-of-Scrool Activities,” a textbook for teachers, educators, and pedagogues, has been published with the aid of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC).
The edition was prepared through a synthesis of the unique experience of the international intercultural children's camp “Roots of Tolerance,” which has had, through EAJC aid, an eight-year history in different regions of Ukraine. The camp works on a unique methodology. For three weeks, children from different ethnic and religious communities not only live together and learn about each other's country, but are very literally permeated by each other's culture. The work to foster tolerance in the camp is based on immersion: all of the participants live out each day as representatives of a given culture. As a result, the children do not only mechanically accumulate knowledge about the culture, language, and customs of different peoples, but also gain a lasting sense of involvement. According to psychologists, this methodology is most effective in fostering international and interreligious tolerance in children and youth, in countering xenophobia, forming an active civil position in members of national communities, spreading knowledge about the national, cultural, religious, and civilizational diversity of the modern world.
The “Policulturica” textbook was the result of a Herculean effort on the part of the authors – the psychologists and pedagogues Anna Lenchyovskaya, Kira Kreydman, and Miroslav Greenberg. The book offers the most effective methods of work tested in the children's camp experience, as well as different forms of school and out-of-school activities for children.
In his address to the reader, EAJC General Council Chairman Josef Zisels notes: “Unfortunately, there is no doubt as to the existence of problems in interethnic and interreligious relations in the modern world. In many cases, not only adults, but children become victims of intolerance towards members of other ethnicities and religious groups. The source of this problem is the common human inability to perceive the Other, who is different in culture, religion, outlook, behavior, language, appearance. The fostering of tolerance, including international and interreligious, must become an inalienable part of the education of a human being in civilized society. There is a demand for a complex educational program to foster tolerance and counter xenophobia. I want to hope that the popularization of the methods of the “Roots of Tolerance” children's camp will become a significant contribution to the task of developing international tolerance. The methodology we created that involves “immersion” into cultural and religious life of the peoples turned out to be very effective. If described concisely, its main differences come down to, first of all, the activation of the mechanism of children's empathy, compassion towards others, the use of game methodologies which children like very much, and, finally, the active formation of positive attitudes It is very important that our method, in contrast to previous ones that always were accompanied by a certain threat of assimilation, creates a completely opposite reaction - the strengthening of national and religious identity.”
The fostering of tolerance is one of the most important directions of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress's activities.
Besides the traditional interethnic camp in Ukraine, whose participants number children from two dozen ethnic communities of different countries from the region, as well as children from families of Afghan and Iraqui refugees, the EAJC plans to hold a separate similar camp for the countries of the Southern Caucasus.