Between 31st of October and the 7th of November 20 youngsters met up for the international cultural exchange „Culture.World.Me.“ in Menslage, Lower Saxony. One half of the participants were from Germany the other half from Ukraine. The project was organized in cooperation with German NGO NaturKultur e.V.

The broad Workshop offer during the youth encounter dealt with questions such as: What is culture actually? Where does it originate from and how? Why are our cultures so different? But are there similarities, too? Where do prejudices arise and do I stereotype in my daily life? How can we communicate differences? How can I use differences as a chance to improve intercultural communications and abilities?

Introducing theater, video and audio-recording as media to work during the exchange, we approached the different topics in a creative way. This way the participants had the opportunity to get to know new approaches to topics and how to express themselves in a new way. Through theater, there was the possibility to experience a new, different perspective through acting out different characters: “to stand in someone’s shoes”, to see the people with their culture and all the influences on their life and to think why could somebody finally got to the point to think in an extreme way.

We encouraged the participants to develop respect towards all individuals and their cultures although they might have a totally different opinion and to find a way to communicate the differences and make compromises.

* project was funded by Stiftung EVZ Auswärtiges Amt and Robert Bosch Stiftung within Meet Up: Deutsch-Ukrainische Jugendbegegnungen

For more information, take a look at the website of the project.
Check out also our facebook page.