Activity 1: Personal Actions

There are many things you can do to make your school or community more inclusive to people of all ethnic backgrounds. Here are a few examples:

· Learn more about the ethnic backgrounds of yourself and your classmates. Have each student interview parents, grandparents, and other relatives to learn more about their family history. Information can be compiled into a family tree or a collage that incorporates maps, images, language samples, and other artifacts you decide. Create an exhibit of all the work in the school hallway or other special place, and invite other students to view the exhibit.

· Document students' experiences with ethnic discrimination, and identify behaviours to create positive change. Ask classmates to submit poems, essays, songs, or artwork about their personal experiences with discrimination. Then compile these into a booklet, website, exhibit, or use the collected works as the basis of a poetry reading or other performance. (For examples of student writing, see http://www.teenwriters.com/stories/discrimination.asp) To focus on solutions, include examples of positive behaviours, framed in terms of what you can do. Examples:

I can start examining my beliefs other ethnic backgrounds. I can ask myself, "Is that really true, or could it be just a stereotype?"
I can learn more about different ethnic groups by reading a book, seeing a movie, attending an event, or making friends with people from different backgrounds.
I can stop telling jokes or making fun of people based on their ethnicity or nationality.
I can speak up when I hear people making fun of others based on their ethnicity or nationality.
I can say "I feel hurt when you say ________ ."

To help guide your work as you plan a project, ask your teacher for project planning tools.

The following websites provide additional ideas for on-line projects and collabouration with students around the world:

· Intercultural E-mial Classroom Connections (IECC): IECC helps classrooms link with partners in other cultures and countries for email pen-pal exchanges and other projects. http://www.iecc.org
· International Education and Resource Network (iEARN): The vision and purpose of iEARN is to enable young people to undertake projects designed to make a meaningful contribution to the health and welfare of the planet and its people. Schools must join the iEARN network to take part in the projects, which are described on the website. http://www.iearn.org

Activity 2: Learn More About Ethnic Groups in Your Community
You will do this activity in three steps, labeled a., b., c.

a. Conduct research about your community. Using census data or other sources of information, research answers to these questions:

- Which ethnic groups and nationalities are represented in our community?
- When did these groups come to our community?
- What are some of the reasons these groups left their homes and came to our community?
- What is the process of adaptation like?
- What are some ways people from these groups have contributed to the community?

If possible, invite a representative from a relevant organization to discuss the experiences of immigrants in your country. Remember - building community is everyone's responsibility, so be sure to ask what you can do to make mew people feel welcome. Prepare interview questions ahead of time. Examples:

- What are some reasons people come to this country?
- What are conditions like in the home country? What factors created these conditions?
- Where do people go when they first arrive?
- Who provides assistance with learning about the new culture?
- How do people earn a living in their new country? How is this different than what they did in their home country?
- What can we do to make newcomers feel welcome?

b. Present your findings. Compile your work into a factsheet, website, brochure, or other document to help people learn about different ethnic groups in your community. Make your display as informative as possible by including pictures, maps, statistics, charts, first-person accounts/interviews, samples of music, examples of traditional clothing or implements, and other artifacts you determine.

c. Reflect on your learning. Using your journals, write responses to the following questions:

· What have I learned about people in my community?
· How have my ideas changed from what I knew before?
· What have I learned about how choice -- or lack of choice -- is a factor in why people leave their homes? For example, can I differentiate between people who leave by choice vs. those who are forced to leave due to war, natural disaster, or economic troubles?

Activity 3: Learn more about United Nations Policies
You will do this activity in four steps, labeled a., b., c., and d.

a. Brainstorm policies to eliminate ethnic discrimination at the national or international level. As you read in the case study, ethnic discrimination is carried out by some of the following means:

- prohibiting people from speaking or writing their language
- prohibiting children from learning in the language at school
- destroying libraries, churches, monuments, or other culturally significant places
- prohibiting people from owning land, businesses, or other property
- excluding people from participation in political processes, such as voting.

Imagine that you are part of an international commission to eliminate and prevent ethnic discrimination at the international level. What policies would you make? Who would these policies apply to? What would you do to enforce them? Write your ideas below:

1. Policies I would create to eliminate or prevent ethnic discrimination:

2. These policies would apply to…(individuals? governments? businesses? others?)

3. I would enforce these policies by…

b. Review policies created by the United Nations. The United Nations has developed several documents to address ethnic discrimination, including the Declaration of the Rights of People Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities Adopted by General Assembly resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992 Read the following excerpt from this document, or view the full text on-line: (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/d_minori.asp).

· Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (hereinafter referred to as persons belonging to minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.

· Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain their own associations.

· States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.

· States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of education, in order to encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within their territory. Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole.

· States should consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country.

c. Discuss or write responses to the following questions:

- What are the key ideas of the UN Declaration?

- How is this policy is similar or different than the policies you created?

d. Find out if your country has signed this Declaration. Remember that the United Nations is an organization of governments; it is not a government itself. Therefore, it is up to each individual country to carry out UN Declarations. Declarations are not laws; they are general statements that set forth a standard of conduct. Countries that sign the Declaration to show their support for it.

- Find out if your country has ratified the Declaration. If so, when did they do it?
- What actions is your country taking to uphold the Declaration?
- If your country has not signed it, contact a member of your government to find out why not.