ABOUT THE PROJECT
The project, titled "Build it together!", aims to promote awareness and build knowledge of EU citizenship rights, associated European common values, and common democratic standards. It achieves this by fostering understanding and sharing best practices on the benefits of diversity, as well as effective measures to tackle discrimination and racism at the local level.
As part of the project idea, we use two main concepts in our planned activities. These activities focus on targeting the older generation and youth by sharing good practices that help citizens better understand each other and promote integration. They also aim to enhance understanding of differences within cities through two common mediums: storytelling and home cooking. Storytelling involves collecting accounts as told and witnessed by citizens throughout their lives. The second medium, home cooking, highlights that despite diverse customs and traditions, different cuisines share common factors and ingredients. This implies that even though we appear different, we share commonalities among us.
Through the project, we also address the barriers between older people and youth. We challenge perceptions and misconceptions, such as viewing youth as wasteful or as troublemakers, and confront the fear older people often have of interacting with youth, a fear frequently based on media portrayals. This phenomenon is supported by research from Macionis and Plummer (2009) and Devlin (2020). From our perspective, Covid-19 increased this fear and further separated these groups. The lack of interaction proves detrimental to society as a whole. The project seeks to overcome some of the issues that impede communication through its planned activities.
Storytelling uses words to create new worlds and experiences in a reader's or listener's imagination, impacting human emotions. It can also lead people to accept original ideas or encourage them to take action. Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing narratives, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics, or embellishment. Every culture possesses its own stories or narratives, shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, or instilling moral values. By learning about stories from different cultures, individuals discover surprising insights and begin to recognize the shared bonds of our common humanity. Listening to or reading these stories also helps people realize that their dreams and aspirations may have more in common with others than initially perceived. Storytelling serves as a method to teach ethics, values, and cultural norms and differences. Learning is most effective in social environments that provide authentic social cues about how knowledge applies. Stories function as a tool to transmit knowledge within a social context.
Social eating highlights food as a common dominating factor with shared characteristics across different countries. Through food workshops, we aim to identify common traditional foods, which leads to a better understanding of the complexities of diverse European societies and helps build stronger communities at the local level, between other communities within the country, and at the EU level. These sessions involve different age groups and include individuals from diverse backgrounds, allowing us to activate and process negative feelings or situations resulting from racism, migration, or climate change. Communal eating increases social bonding and feelings of well-being, enhancing one's sense of contentment and embedding within the community. It also serves as an identification of cultural or ethnic groups through food patterns. Considering that food often acts as a means of retaining cultural identity, immigrants bring the food of their countries with them and cook traditional meals to preserve their heritage. Different cultures tend to use ingredients, including fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, and preparation techniques, that may be new to us.