Beyond the Borders - Between the Cultures
Stereotypes in Poland still play a big role, and migrants with their families live outside polish society. Poles are still not prepared to live in multicultural society. The main aim of the project is to improve the relationship between young people in Poland and migrants – especialy from Ukraine, Turkey and Romania. 3 volunteers from this countries took a part in trainings: Language, Multicultural, Inter-religious dialogue, Migrants policy and condition, photography, excursion to Swidnica (with Peace Church), bicycle trips around Wroclaw and meetings with students on uniwersities. Trainings and visits were organized by our Local Partners – Sietar Polska, Evangelical School of Theology and Euro-Concret with umbrela organization AWO from Germany, Mlody Wroclaw . Than volunteers joined our permanent activities directed for local community of Downtown District Nadodrze in range of Partnership for Saint Matthias Square/ Wroclaw and In Kaleidoscope of Cultures project. And during that they were creating a new programme based on informal education: workshops, artistic meetings, language and dancing workshops, lectures, lifecooking show, living library, moovie’s and music’s presentation. Anything to encourage and implement the exchange among different cultures, at an international but also at a local level, for breaking stereotypes about migrants.This 8months project is also a base to net cooperation and preparation of a new intercultural historic project. During the all stay volunteers were supported by mentors, language tandem and all staff of Foundation House of Peace and Local Partners. Volunteers were also taking photos that would show the panorama of multicultural community of Wroclaw.
Before and after Poland access to EU, we are the witness of new national migration in range of economical reasons. Traditional, old generation of cities and villages, often multicultural, but also young people are surprised by appearance of new unknown migrants cultures e.g. Korean, Irish, English, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Turkish, Romanian. On the other hands we observe the new trend – coming out cultural identity, for witch our society is not prepared. All this phenomenon and unsatisfying behaviors of local government (concentrated on promotion and tourism, not social problems) disappoints citizens and builds barriers and breaks up society. One of the reasons of project realization is increasing the conflicts between diverse cultures: Poles, Ukrainians, Turkish and Romanians. So that Foundation House of Peace try to work by activation local communities in multicultural aspect. We reached best results (better integration and understanding) in case that foreigners was involved in activity.



Three young people from Ukraine, Turkey and Romania were initiating good relationships between inhabitants of Nadodrze district and represented by themselves minorities. Project was connected with an House of Peace Foundation action MulticultiMicronomics Nadodrze, in which we promote small enterprise run by foreigners. It is a cycle of movies – reportage.
Volunteers carried out workshops for youth from social clubs in our neighborhood – meetings with foreign culture. Dana introduced spring tradition of Martishor, carried out artistic workshops and Gamze presented Turkish decorative patterns.


Dana, as she wanted to motivate local community to cooperation and taking more care about state of their own backyard, organized outdoor screening of Romanian shorts. Fundacja Hobbit gave the space, but we had to clean it first which we did together with volunteers from Semper Avanti. In the evening outdoor screening took place.


Moreover, meetings with Romanian and Turkish culture took place. They were addressed to wider publicity. Gamze organized in June Turkish Days, during which one could take part in: screening of Turkish movie ("My father and my son"), tasting cuisine, traditional dancing and presentation of wedding ceremony with it rituals. Saturday was prepared mainly for children – they had an opportunity to take part in storytelling of Turkish fairytales. “Take part”, because group Studnia O which carried out the meeting tells stories colorfully, with use of costume, music, decorations and involves audience to active participation.




Dana organized Romanian Days – meeting introducing culture, geography, cuisine and tradition of Romania, screening of a movie "Filantropica". All events took place in Klub pod Kolumnami on Sw. Macieja square.











