Cultural Awareness Support Training for Innovation – Cast4Innovation – EPALE – European Commission

Multiculturalism has always been pivotal in the lives of EU citizens.  While a few years ago this perception was limited to foreigners coming from other European countries, today with the term multiculturalism we broaden the definition to foreigners from all over the world.  Cultural diversity is an added value to our societies when properly managed. It brings wealth, opportunities for development  and new ideas  for raising  the quality of life. The process isn’t always successful and leads to resistance in target societies where segregation, verbal and physical violence take place. Nationalist movements in various European countries are a direct consequence of this friction, basing their political consensus on the exclusion of the others.

Cultural Awareness Support Training for Innovation, (Cast4Innovation) fits in this context aiming to improve cultural awareness competences of professionals within the partner countries and wherever its benefits can reach.

The partners from Northen Ireland, Scotland, Greece, Italy and Turkey set the following goals to be reached at the end of the project: tackle racism, improve mutual understanding through cultural awareness; developing a diversity management competence in educators; giving creative illustrations of equality and social cohesion through music, art, poetry, sport and food; creating a toolkit for adult educators and facilitators supporting  e-learning; and creating an accredited course available all over Europe.

Following these objectives, the results of the project are:

• a competence map describing the competences needed by cultural educators on cultural awareness and management;
• open educational resources and e-learning course; depending on the educators’ needs. The course is designed to be managed by adult educators and/or individuals on their own or in groups.
• a trainers handbook to guide the adult educators in the use of the training material created. The handbook includes an analysis of migration statistics of every partner country and their population by nationality ;
• accreditation and certification procedures.

The open educational resources and the e-learning course are flexible and can be easily used in different contexts. Two learning units were created: 1. Understanding Cultural Awareness and Diversity and 2. Understanding and using Inclusive Cultural Awareness approaches in Training  and then translated in all partners’ languages (Italian, Greek and Turkish). The learning material, the online course and the e-learning platform were evaluated in two different stages involving adult educators and the communities interested in the activities and topics of the project.