CENTER FOR EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT: Living together, Exchange in Trogen 2017

  In the period 10.01.-24.01.2017, 40 children from different part of Macedonia, together with children from Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina participated on an international exchange in the Children Village Pestalozzi, Switzerland. For these two weeks the kids used to live together and learn through the different workshops delivered by the PCF coordinators. The aim of this emancipatory approach is to enable young people to determine their own lives and to shape society as mature citizens in freedom. The Children’s Village was a “neutral” space that provides an ideal platform for encounters, experiences and reflections.

Children from two countries, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were divided on three groups and had chance to learn and increase their knowledge on topics such Anti-Discrimination, Migration and Conflict Resolution. Within these topics children had chance to reflect on four UNESCO pillars and values that PCF are promoting: Learning to KNOW, where children had chance to improve their knowledge in terms of intercultural communication. The second part is Learning to BE, where they work on self-perception, awareness, esteem and confidence. Within the programme they had chance to be involved and Learn to DO, through which everyone approached to unknown people easily and were communication easier and safer. And finally the most important, they had chance to LIVE TOGETHER, where everyone identifies diversity as chance, especially in the Children’s village, reflect and applying what they have learned. (…)

This project contributes on creating intercultural competent capacities, which is widely been recognized for decades as essential for peacefully coexistence in diverse world. (President CED, Metin Muaremi)