Alphabet of Tolerance - program for children

The Alphabet of Tolerance program for children was created as a response by our organization to the problem of social distance among children in elementary schools. Therefore, the goals of working with children within this program are:

for children to gain basic knowledge and experience in the field of tolerance toward differences,
for children to be encouraged to cooperate and respect each other within their class.

Since teachers are in the most intensive contact with students, since children learn from them continuously in many ways, and since their work can influence a large number of children, we believed that they are the most suitable people to become the carriers of the knowledge, experiences, and values brought by this program. Thus, we created the program Alphabet of Tolerance – Education and Implementation (a training program for teachers, school counselors, and anyone in schools interested in working with children through workshops) with the following core objectives:

to empower teachers in their professional role, increasing their sensitivity and competencies in understanding social phenomena (such as prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, social distance, but also tolerance and cooperation);
to support the development of skills necessary to create an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding among students in classrooms and schools.

The teacher training program consists of several components:

Training of teachers (three training modules, a total of seven days). The goal is to increase sensitivity and understanding of the social phenomena addressed in the Alphabet of Tolerance program, to improve participants’ communication skills, provide basic knowledge about workshop-based work, and strengthen participants in their role as facilitators of workshops from the Alphabet of Tolerance program.
Work by trained teachers with children (12 workshops, each lasting 1 to 1.5 hours). The workshops with children typically take place over three months, once a week, lasting no more than two school hours. After completing the training, workshop facilitators receive a handbook for implementing the program as well as all the necessary materials for working with children.
Supervision meetings (monitoring the implementation of the program with children by educators). In these meetings, participants typically look for answers to dilemmas they encounter during the workshops and acquire additional skills to help them facilitate the program effectively. The handbook used for working with children has been translated into Albanian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian.

By 2014, more than 3,500 elementary school children (from Belgrade, Banatsko Karađorđevo, Bavanište, Dimitrovgrad, Zrenjanin, Kikinda, Kraljevo, Kovin, Leskovac, Majdanpek, Novi Sad, Niš, Opovo, Prijepolje, Subotica, Torda, Čegreg) had participated in the program. It has been continuously revised to better meet children’s developmental needs while fulfilling its educational goals. Over 350 professionals in education have completed the training that enables them to implement this program competently with children, including teachers of nearly all subjects, psychologists, pedagogues, principals, and school librarians.