Intercultural Activities
- Multaka: Intercultural Tours in Athens
Multaka: Intercultural Tours in Athens is a joint project which aims at the promotion of social integration through intercultural dialogue. It has been designed by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum and the Ministry of Culture and Sports and it is implemented by the Development and Destination Management Agency of the Municipality of Athens. The project is funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund 2014-2020 (75% EU funds, 25% national funds).
Multaka: Intercultural Tours in Athens is a joint project which aims at the promotion of social integration through intercultural dialogue. It has been designed by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum and the Ministry of Culture and Sports and it is implemented by the Development and Destination Management Agency of the Municipality of Athens.
The word “Multaka” in Arabic means “meeting point.” In the context of the project, the meeting points are the following museums/sites of the Ministry of Culture and Sports:
a. Museum of Modern Greek Culture
b. Epigraphic Museum
c. Ancient Agora of Athens
d. Archaeological site of Keramikos
Through “Multaka: Intercultural Tours in Athens”, migrants, refugees and persons with a migrant background have the chance to get to know aspects of the Greek civilization and history. Trained “intercultural guides” perform intercultural tours in the above four museums and archaeological places in Athens. The intercultural tours are available in one of the following languages: Greek, Arabic, Farsi, English, and French. The intercultural guides present and discuss objects of the museums/sites from their point of view. The guides bring their own experiences to the tours. The tours are interactive and engage the visitors in intercultural dialogue. The museums/archaeological sites thus become the “meeting points” of people with different cultural backgrounds, discussing common experiences and values.
The intercultural Tours started at the end of August 2022 and will last utill the end of June 2023.
Similar projects take place in various European cities, inspired by Multaka-Berlin, which started in 2015 and is still an ongoing very successful project.
The “intercultural guides” will also be part of a participatory video workshop. Short video/s will be created based on participants' experiences in the project as well as their intercultural experiences as residents of Athens. The outcomes of the Multaka Athens project and the prospect of its expansion will be discussed at a symposium, in which participants and managers of other European Multaka projects will also take part.
- Summer Workshop
In the context of its actions for integration, the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, in cooperation with the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy, planned the participation of adolescent migrants and beneficiaries of international protection in the educational programme “Summer Workshop on Democracy”. This programme was designed in 2014 by the Educational Programmes Department of the Hellenic Parliament Foundation and has been reformulated for migrant/refugee children. Selection of participants was carried out through a cooperation between the General Secretariat for Migration Policy and collective representative bodies of migrants and refugees, and other stakeholders. The programme was implemented as following:
- From June 20th-29th, 2022, approximately forty (40) adolescents with a migrant and refugee background, 15 to 17 years old, secondary school students, took part in both three-day action cycles.
- From June 26th-28th 2023, twenty (20) adolescents with a migrant and refugee background, 15 to 17 years old, secondary school students, took part in a three-day action cycle.
- June 2024: There are plans for the continuation of the implementation of the programme in 2024, with the addition of a younger age group of migrant/refugee students.
The participants visited the Temple of Hephaestus (“Theseion”), the Ancient Agora, the Pnyx, Plaka, the Old Parliament and the Greek Parliament. Through experiential educational activities they followed a path spanning almost 2,500 years, discovering and learning the history of Greek parliamentarianism in a pleasant and creative way.
The Directorate of Social Integration began a collaboration with the Foundation of the Parliament of Adolescents for Democracy and plans to continue this collaboration in 2023.
