Little Melting Pots (Improving Coexistence in Berlin through Early Childhood Multicultural Learning)

ABSTRACT

One in five people living in Germany today has an immigrant background. Berlin is a popular city in Germany for migration. Integration problems have always been an issue as well as discriminatory actions.

The gap between immigrants and Germans has grown in many sectors of the city due to numerous reasons such as the lack of education based on a cross-cultural & multicultural learning framework. As a consequence Berlin faces problematic integration issues causing society to divide into segregated and isolated groups.

The current early childhood multicultural learning in Berlin is mostly being used in advantaged areas.

The biggest integration issues are encountered in Berlin’s disadvantaged sectors, therefore these areas are more in need of multicultural education.

Early learners are the voice of the future and the hope for change. It is in this period when children develop their social skills, personality traits and start to form their own prejudices and biases.

Multicultural education provides students with educational experiences that enable them to feel responsible and commited to their community, as well as acquire the appropriate knowledge and skills in order to contribute to a better coexistence.

I am proposing a platform to promote multicultural education for kindergartens in disadvantaged areas of Berlin. The idea behind it is to increase the access of this learning framework by bringing children from all backgrounds together to interact and learn from each other. The program will be introduced as a multicultural event where families can come and bring their children to enjoy a day full of sharing, playing, learning, workshops, creating and story-telling. It is also meant to empower parents to be first teachers of multicultural education.

The concept is based on bringing cultures together to a common ground for celebrating diversity. 

The program works in collaboration with KITA teachers, parents and organizations.

An instruction manual video and Educational Kits were developed to provide material for planning, advertising and developing the multicultural event. The program should be hosted every month by a different KITA. They must use the educational kits for developing Little Melting Pots program.

The program uses participatory cultures to function by bringing communities together to improve coexistence in Berlin.

This project was conceived and developed for my thesis project in Hochschule Anhalt University for my masters program in Integrated Design International.