Strengthening Intercultural Competencies

‍Better communication is the key to fewer misunderstandings. We help public administration and security personnel improve their communication skills when working with third-country nationals. Our training allows them to view certain situations from the perspective of a foreigner, which fosters greater understanding.

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• We plan to train a total of 800 people between March 1, 2024, and August 31, 2026.

• The two-day workshop has been accredited by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.  

• Slovo 21 has been working with civil servants since 2011. Since then, we have trained a total of 1,300 people.

• The workshop is designed for employees of the Police of the Czech Republic, the Foreign Police, the Municipal Police, the Fire Rescue Service, the Labour Office of the Czech Republic, the Department for Asylum and Migration Policy (OAMP), and the State Labour Inspection Office.

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Why is it necessary to train civil servants?

According to Ministry of the Interior data, there were 836,000 people from different cultural backgrounds in the Czech Republic at the end of 2023. Sooner or later, all of these people will come into contact with Czech authorities. However, many employees have never received adequate training in intercultural and communication skills, which can negatively impact their work and their approach to foreigners. That is why we developed a two-day interactive training concept to make working with foreigners easier for state and local government employees. Our goal is to show officials that, sometimes, a foreigner's behavior is simply a result of their different cultural background.

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What does the training look like?

We don't want to lecture officials on the theory of migration. We focus primarily on experiential and interactive activities that place participants in the position a foreigner might face in everyday life. By role-playing, they have the opportunity to experience model situations through the eyes of migrants. At the same time, each training session is tailored to the participants, whose needs vary depending on their specific jobs. They actively participate at the beginning of the workshop, helping to shape the final content of the individual activities based on their expectations.

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Guest-foreigner

Public administration and security personnel often have a distorted view of foreigners living in the Czech Republic because they simply do not have the opportunity to meet and talk with them outside of their workplace. That is why the workshop includes a "guest chair" session. This gives participants the chance to have personal contact with someone who came to the Czech Republic as a foreigner and shares what they found difficult, as well as what pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised them. The foreign guests we work with come from Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Syria, and Belarus.  

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The project "Strengthening Intercultural Competencies 2024-2026" is co-financed by the European Union.