... is realized DURING FEBRUARY AND MARCH OF 2005, as a part of the project “Alphabet of Tolerance for the Young”.

Program is offering the possibility for learning and developing basic intercultural skills, attitudes and values. The idea for this program has been arising gradually – the first step was work of the “Hajde da…” Group with children in Roma Center “April 8th”.

A set of educational psychological workshops was originally meant for primary school children and later it spread to working with teachers through the “Alphabet of Tolerance – Education and Implementation”, that had got credential of Ministry of Education and Sports of Republic of Serbia. Based on our previous experience in working with children and teachers and as an answer to the need of young people to be proactive in their communities, we’ve created a pilot program, meant for youngsters and namet it “Because It’s Different!”.

This program offers a chance for learning and developing of basic intercultural skills, attitudes and values.

Main themes and phenomena treated by the program are: discrimination, prejudices, stereotypes, distribution of power, human rights etc. Participants were 39 young people, aged 16-25.

Project consisted of four days of interactive workshops; participant showed a high level of motivation for active participation, share their experiences and contribute to quality of the learning process.
They were particularly satisfied with the topics and the way they were dealt with. Visits that were organized were an extra value of this program: they were nice opportunity for gaining more intercultural experiences.
The first visit was to the “Old Belgrade Town”, where, at the very beginning of the program, we had the opportunity to learn more about the multicultural reality of Belgrade and get to know the fact that its contemporary looks was influenced by Romans, Turks, Austro-Hungarians… During the second visit, we saw the Bajrakli Mosque, Jewish Municipality, synagogue, Russian Orthodox Church and Catholic Church, where our hosts (some of whom were the participants of our program themselves) introduced us with political attitudes, believing, legends, customs and traditional holiday meals characteristic for their religion. The third visit took place in the British Council, where our guests from NGO “Enfants” from Berane, Montenegro, presented their activities and work in the field of supporting inhabitants of Roma settlements in Berane and Rozaj to include themselves in formal-educational system and complete primary and secondary school, in order to have larger possibilities to find a job and accomplish their rights.

Results of final evaluation, at the end of the program, showed that change has been attained – young people who participated our program afterwards had better understanding of phenomena such as: prejudices, discrimination, stereotypes.
They learnt a lot about human rights and their attitudes concerning minority groups and “differences” became more tolerant. Participants also became more aware of the fact that there are numerous minorities living in Belgrade and that they face lots of problems in their everyday life.

It is especially important that many of the participants were motivated for continuation of working themselves, feeling that there are various ways for initiating a non-violent action against discrimination in their communities.