Children together

In many years of activities and work, cooperation and meetings with the inhabitants of Vukovar and the surrounding area, we saw how the war destruction severely undermined inter-ethnic relations of the people (as confirmed by various studies) who have always lived here – not only next to each other but with each other.

In particular, it was hard to listen to parents who were struggling with personal dilemmas in deciding on the enrollment of their children in educational institutions (kindergartens, primary and secondary schools). Specifically, in the area of Vukovar a segregated system of education starts from kindergarten and doesn’t offer any alternative to the parents, but directs them to classify themselves/ their child into the Croatian majority or Serbian minority ethnic group, thereby completely negating the fact that before the Homeland War 27 different nationalities lived in this area.

Since 2003. our center, in cooperation with parents, experts and relevant institutions, has been developing projects and activities (New School, CSHR, For the Future of Vukovar) aimed at finding alternatives to the existing educational models. The project Children Together has been developed as a sequence of our efforts to unify all educational levels in this process – from kindergarten to high school.

The project is designed for children of different nationalities at preschool age. Through informal education it enables them joint meetings, work and socialization in order to acquire new knowledge, development and enhancement of personal skills and the acquisition of intercultural competences.

The project is being implemented since 2008., in cooperation with the kindergartens Vukovar I and Vukovar II.

So far, two rounds of interactive workshops have been conducted, with activities that include games, learning (English, computer science, creative workshops …) and entertainment. Approximately 80 children participated it the programme so far.

Project is currently being implemented with the financial support of Erste Foundation, Austria.