Mondialogo School Contest
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Mondialogo School Contest is a platform for appreciating cultural diversity, respect for difference, interaction of cultures and intercultural dialogue. This helps one bring out of his/her own prejudices and limitations. Tolerance and understanding that are the expectations from these are the principal components that can help endure peace among nations. With this view UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) along with Daimler initiated Mondialogo School Contest in October 2003 as a platform for intercultural dialogue among educators and students across the globe. UNESCO thinks that if our young people are provided education characterized by intercultural dialogue only then they will be able to make the future world habitable – with peace and without war.
Mondialogo has created two different platforms: Mondialogo School Contest (MSC) and Mondialogo Engineering Award (MEA). MSC is for the students of secondary level aged 14-18 years, whereas MEA inspires the engineering students. Though both the platforms necessitate performing some practical activities, the aim of all these is developing intercultural dialogue. Both the competitions end in attractive international symposia. The First year of MSC 2003-2004 concluded at Barcelona while MSC of 2005-2006 met its end at Rome. In the Second Mondialogo School Contest more than two thousand and five hundred school teams participated. Each team consisting of 4 to 30 members were peered with another team of another country, even of another continent.
- After the huge registration of 2740 teams in the MSC 2007-2008, the competition is now on the move.
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[edit] Things to do
- 1. To organize a team
- 2. To start dialogues between members of both teams
- 3. To settle a project topic
- 4. To gradually make up a team page on the Mondialogo web portal
- 5. To answer weekly questions
- 6. To send the tangible project result to UNESCO head office
[edit] Start-up Activities
After being introduced the team members can start to talk in whatever means they want like: writing through post, making phone calls, sending fax or mailing electronically. The peer discussion may start in making questions like the following:
- 1. What are the main characteristics of your school?
- 2. What are the main characteristics of your community?
- 3. In which country do you live?
- 4. What is your mother tongue?
- 5. Do you speak any other languages?
- 6. Do you already have a school in another country that you are in contact with?
- 7. Why did you decide to join the Mondialogo school contest?
- 8. What experience do you expect to gain through your participation?
- 9. Who are your role models and why?
- 10. What do appreciate most in your friends and why?
- 11. What values are most important in your team and why?
[edit] Mondialogo Web Portal
The huge but easily accessible web portal of Mondialogo is the main resource to work on the project and develop intercultural dialogue. Just click www.mondialogo.org and you will reach the wider horizon. Click the Mondialogo School Contest icon at the top serial and among many you will get a list at your left. If you dive into the list you can find all the team pages or profiles of the team leaders and other participants. The site can take you to the first Mondialogo contestant teams as well. Moreover there are the newsletters, discussion threads etc.
[edit] Weekly Questions
Every week a question is given to all the teams and the teams are to give the answers. Everyone can see those answers and compare how different the answers could be! The questions that were given every week inquired about academic as well as cultural aspects.
Educators from all over the world opine that intercultural dialogue is part and parcel of quality education of 21st century. Interdisciplinary approach, team teaching, participatory and creative methods effective use of ICTs are the essential components of intercultural dialogue. Mondialogo School Contest emphases these needs and creates environment to practice them. Let us conclude this article with the plea of Mondialogo Team : “The experiences of the Mondialogo School Contest can become milestones on your students’ path to being genuine junior ambassadors, conscious of their cultural, remaining flexible with others, willing to share and to appreciate the cultural backgrounds of others, and being actively involved in intercultural dialogue and exchange. If with your help, we manage to achieve this, then together we will have taken a major step on the road to a more peaceful future.”
