Project meeting in Hagen | Day 5

Today students presented the week's project results: Their guidelines on interreligious dialogue in four languages. Students explained how talking to somebody with a different belief can be successful. The guideslines will be made public here, too.

As this was the last meeting of the project we also travelled to the other schools in the form of an exhibtion. We remembered our time in Bucharest when we talked about migration and found out that it is not a new phenomenon. People have always moved between the three countries for various reasons.

We also travelled back to Dolni chiflik where we discussed how to deal with diversity at school. We always have students who are different so we wrote a managing diversity strategy for each school.

Project meeting in Hagen | Day 4

Today everybody had to get up early in order to meet up for our trip to Brussels. First of all we visited the European Parliament to find out more about the multinational work of a Member of the European Parliament.

 Dr. Dieter Köster, MEP for Wetter, gave us some insights into his life and shared some ideas about the present state of the EU and what needs to be changed.

Afterwards we went to visit the Parlamentarium to find out more about European history and to understand the ideas behind the founding of the EU. Everybody was given a media guide to explore the exhibition.

Then it was time to look at Brussels beautiful old town and taste some of its culinary offers like fries, waffles and chocolates. At the end of the day we went to La Chapelle Royale to meet pupils from Brussels for a discussion on interreligious dialogue. We found out that Protestants are a minority in Belgium. Students of all four countries - Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany and Romania - talked about their experience in small groups.

The students and teachers on this project would like to thank European coordiantor of the city of Hagen Mrs Sabine Krink for her excellent organisation of this very impressive day.

Project meeting in Hagen | Day 3

On the third day of the meeting students sat down to write their own rules for interreligious dialogue. This was done in four international groups. After having written out four different versions students sat in two groups and merged their two versions into one. In the next step they looked at the results and discussed them. They finally consolidated the two versions into one final version.

The afternoon was devoted to spending time with host families and diving into German culture.

Project meeting in Hagen | Day 2

Today the group went on an excursion to Duisburg-Marxloh to see how people of different religions live together. In order to find out we went to Merkesz mosque where we found out about its planning process. The mosque was planned including representatives from the neighbourhood like the Catholic priest, the Protestand pastor and others. Some decisions about the mosque were taken jointly, for example that the mosque has clear windows in the ground floor so that everybody can see what is happening inside. There are also three entrances to cater for different types of visitors (believers, visitors).

After that the group enjoyed a walk in the sunshine through Marxloh to have lunch in the canteen of Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Gymnasium.

After a break which people spent in groups we went to Petershof which is part of the Catholic parish neighbouring the mosque. Here social worker Oguz Topac told us how the help refugees and migrants of all backgrounds in Duisburg. They have many volunteers and can offer help in many languages. Moreover they are creating more and more offers according to need.

To sum up we can say that we have had some great new impressions on how people of different religions live together and what they can do to ensure a peaceful community.

 

Project meeting in Hagen | Day 1

Representatives of all three schools have met in Hagen today to start working on their last topic: interreligious dialogue. 

After some icebreaking activities students worked on their understanding of their own and other religions. We were led through the day by the expert Ulla August, a Protestant pastor working for Pädagogisches Institut Villigst, who created great activities for the students and teachers to open their minds for interreligious dialogue.

She guided the students by a variety of excercises to insights like these:

 We also learned that it is good to observe the following things:

 To remind us of the fact that religions have many things in common Ms August gave us these symbols:

 Thank you for a great start of the working meeting! The headteacher of Kaufmannsschule II also came to welcome our guests.

We are all looking forward to our excursion about interreligious dialogue tomorrow.

Managing Diversity Strategies for Schools

After the international project meeting in Dolni chiflik, Bulgaria the students wrote their own managing diversity strategies which we proudly publish today.