Posted on Dec 22, 2013

Fifty children from different ethnic groups watched and participated together in the “Christmas Impossible” Show of the Silistra puppet theater on December 21st, 2013 . At the beginning of winter vacation the youngest pupils from the schools in the villages of Alekovo, Alfatar and Iskra together with their peers from Silistra enthusiastically cheered the heroes of the story and discussed the meaning of “friendship” and how to be good to each other.

The event is a part of the “Different children with equal rights ” project, started in September 2013 and run by a local non-government organization “Paralel Silistra.” The planned activities received financial support of € 17,000 from Program for supporting NGOs in Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area.

The project develops the idea that teaching children’s rights, as a part of civic education, should be carried out in multi-ethnic classes / communities rather than in mono-ethnic ones. Only in a multiethnic group children can actually participate in the process of multicultural communication and develop tolerance and respect for their own rights and those of others. Following this idea, the project “Different children with equal rights ” aims to implement an educational model for teaching tolerance, anti-racist and anti-discriminatory behavior in mixed ethnic groups. For this purpose, children from mono ethnic schools will participate in the planned training.

Associate Professor Daniela Tassevska of the University of Veliko Tarnovo developed a specialized methodology for teaching human rights in an accessible interactive form. In November 2013 18 teachers from schools in the villages Alekovo, Alfatar, Iskra and Sitovo, as well as from major school in Silistra, were trained.

In early 2014, the project plans to engage children and their parents in joint educational activities to improve communication between ethnic groups in Silistra.