Background: The pilot project Open Doors for Danube Countries for All (ODDA) builds on experiences from the previous work and projects of the network Danube Networkers. Experiences from cross-national projects have shown that many people are reserved when it comes to programs that include international meetings or travel to the West or the East. This applies especially to people with low education, but also to people, who have large knowledge about their own culture. This reserve comes from the lack of knowledge of languages – the other national languages or English, the lack of experience with the cultures of the Danube neighbours and the resulting fear of getting into difficult situations.
On this background, in the project ODDA the citizens from 5 organizations, who already have experience with international work and of working together in the project Tastes of Danube, will create low-threshold materials in Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Romanian and Serbian. These materials should open communication by key words and sentences, gestures, images, music, dance, etc. and this also in situations when there is no common language knowledge, by leading into various areas of the everyday life (what to do and not do in greetings, eating, in daily situations) and to develop confidence in such situations.
The working materials will be developed by the participants in 6 languages – Bulgarian,
Croatian, English, German, Romanian, and Serbian, tested by other partner groups and evaluated.
A project website and the use of the social media will make the project process interactive and transparent and make the developed materials available also to others for purposes such as travel.
After the successful completion of the project, the didactic contents will be extended in a follow-up project in 2018, in which other language groups will be included. Carried out will be seminars for disseminators qualifying for the implementation of the methods.
Financial support: Baden-Württemberg Foundation, own resources, other sponsors
Implementation: The responsible coordination is taken over by ILEU e.V. and its chairwoman Carmen Stadelhofer, in cooperation with the coordinators of the different national groups and DANET e.V.
The project is supported by the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and other sponsors.
More information about:
Carmen Stadelhofer, President of ILEU e.V. and DANET e.V.
Olgastraße 109, D 89073 Ulm
Carmen.stadelhofer@uni-ulm.de