The International Organization for Migration – a UN agency (IOM has operated in Poland since 1992) – announced a nationwide grant competition for local integration activities for children and young people from local and migrant communities. The grants will cover the costs of integration activities for children and young people held in schools or in cooperation with schools and organized by public institutions or non-governmental organizations. The grant competition was consulted with the Ministry of Education and Science.
The main aim of the proposed theatre activities is to introduce participants to group work and encourage cooperation as fundamental elements of work during school and extracurricular activities and in everyday life. An important objective is learning to express emotions while cooperating in a group, formulating rules for this cooperation, and having students take responsibility for following or failing to follow these rules. The student becomes a mentor to themselves and their peers.
Acceptance of differences is important in cooperating and integrating the team. Children from other cultures share knowledge about their customs, practices and traditions. They identify what unites them and what divides them. They notice barriers and try to eliminate them. Integrating the team and showing that together we can achieve more is the goal the organizers want to achieve through these activities.
Working with a literary text, adapting the text for educational purposes and staging a performance will conclude the integration activities, in which both students from Poland and students who have arrived from other countries will participate.
The basis for the work will be a European text known in many cultures: Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”.