Project Details

Let the children change the world

Short Description and Goal

This is a three year project, in which five preschools from Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Norway and Poland collaborate in order to improve the preschools’ teaching methods and educational environments to promote human rights and combat discrimination.

Detailed Description

The project contributes to a decrease of discrimination in our societies, by directing our attention to small children, to how we teach and how they learn, to examine our attitudes and our educational environments; and by changing our preschools in a manner that will promote all individuals’ equal value regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, gender identity or gender expression and disability.

The needs to be address in this project are:

  • to develop the staff members’ knowledge and skills in the area
  • to develop teaching methods adapted to small children
  • to create learning environments that promote inclusion and respect for human rights
  • to develop methods for including families in the work
  • to achieve goals in the national curriculum’s aims for preschool education
  • to actively work with values
  • to treat all parents, regardless of their background, in a respectful manner
  • to raise our children’s awareness of diversity in our societies

This project is mainly teacher oriented, although children of the participating preschools’ will be directly involved in the local project activities.

OBJECTIVES

Let the children change the world has the following objectives:

  1. to create educational environments in the preschools (facilities, materials, teaching methods etc.) that promote every individual’s human rights, regardless ethnic background, race, skin color or nationality, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disabilities or age
  2. to increase the children’s tolerance for diversity and respect for human rights
  3. to increase the teachers’ self-confidence concerning teaching children within the theme of the project
  4. to increase teachers’ teaching skills concerning the theme of the project by exchanging experiences and knowledge
  5. to equip teachers with useful tools to address and manage the different situations of intolerance based on all the grounds of discrimination
  6. to increase parents’ participation in activities connected to the project topic

IMPACT

The activities are:

  • exchanging best practices within each of the grounds of discrimination, test them in different cultural contexts and then adapt them to a European level. The results were documented and compiled into a digital Method Guide, to be spread to other preschools in Europe.
  • putting activities into evaluation by the other partners. The partners critically view each activity and share their opinions with the originators.
  • setting up criteria that helps to examine different preschool environments and let us discover if there are e.g. discriminating toys, indoor and outdoor surroundings, official documents, teaching materials, books and apps that we haven’t thought of before.
  • involving parents in the project work

Approximately 1000 children and their parents and 250 teachers in the preschools involved were affected by the project.

Source: https://www.sern.eu/project/let-the-children-change-the-world/

Initiators are

• Public institution

Project Website(s)

Contact Info

Project Topics

Education, Public Services & Administration

Level / Project Complexity /

Medium

Participating Cities

  • Mölndal
  • Fredrikstad
  • Tallinn
  • Stanin
  • Imola

Sizes of Participating Cities

• less than 1.000
• 20.000 - 100.000
• 100.000 - 500.000

Participating Countries

  • Sweden
  • Norway
  • Estonia
  • Poland
  • Italy

Project Region(s)

• Europe

Media Credits

Photo by CDC on Unsplash