2006 Press Releases
U.S. Consul General Visits a Seminar on Tolerance at School
April 13, 2006
On April 8th the U.S. Consul General John Stepanchuk visited a seminar "Tolerance Starts at School", which was the second stage of a project Teaching Tolerance Towards Ethnic Minorities, Migrants, and Foreigners. The Center for Interethnic Cooperation, Moscow (http://www.interethnic.org/) in partnership with the Tajik NGO Somon, Yekaterinburg, have received a grant from the Democracy Commission at the U.S. Embassy to implement this project. Heads of both organizations, Ashot Ayrapetyan and Farukh Mirzoyev, are alumni of the International Visitors program. Mr. Mirzoyev has recently return from the United States full of impressions and ideas for future projects on tolerance.
Project Teaching Tolerance consists of three stages to be conducted over 6 months. The first seminar took place in January 2006, and brought together teachers and representatives of the ethnic NGOs in Yekaterinburg. The participants discussed concerns and challenges that appeared in the interethnic relations in the city and marked the ways of improving the situation.
The second seminar took place on April 8th, and was targeted to directors of public schools. Trainers from the Center for Interethnic Cooperation worked with 8 directors from Yekaterinburg and 8 school managers from the rural areas of the Sverdlovsk Oblast, which have large non-Slavic populations. The aim of this seminar was to encourage school directors to include teaching tolerance in their curriculum.
The third seminar scheduled for May will be geared to law enforcement officials.
