Education, Social, Youth

Common Ground Educational Program

About this project

The Common Ground Educational Program, launched in 2016, aims to create opportunities for students of different backgrounds – Jewish, Roma, from Budapest and from the countryside, disadvantaged and privileged – to meet their peers from different backgrounds, to learn from and to collaborate with them, and to create together with them. The program runs throughout the entire school year, and its starting point is a teacher training seminar, where teachers plan their own projects in partnership with the professional and financial support of Centropa and our partners. The key element of the program is the personal encounter and the co-creation of the students, which resulted in songs, poems, cookbooks, an exhibition, and a theater play.

Why is it important?

One of the major challenges of the Hungarian educational system is natural segregation: young people graduate from elementary and high school without ever getting close to peers from different ethnic, religious, or social backgrounds. Without any personal experience, their information about these groups is preconception and stereotypes that become fixed by the end of high school. This process contributes to a fragmented, divisive society. In the Common Ground program, students gain first-hand information about other groups, collaborate with them as equal partners and friends, and as a result, their prejudices are reduced.

Why is it special?

In today's Hungary, few students have the opportunity to gain experience with peers of different backgrounds through positive events in a meaningful way. The Common Ground Program is unique in this regard to provide such opportunities. The program is also extraordinary for teachers as it is built on experiential and project-based methodology outside the classroom: the participating teachers gain knowledge and skills they can utilize in their teaching practice after the program.