International students organise Syrian Culture Day for boarding school pupils
On March 15, international students of Lobachevsky University taking part in the "Seeing with the Heart" project organised and conducted a Syrian Culture Day for the pupils of the boarding school for blind and visually impaired children in Nizhny Novgorod.
All the participants enjoyed a chance to learn more about the culture, traditions and cuisine of Syria. The riddles and proverbs prepared by the organisers helped the school students to appreciate how close the cultural traditions of different countries can be and how people of different nationalities can be good friends. At the end of the event, the pupils thanked the UNN international students who arranged this meeting and invited them to organise more joint activities.
Students from Ethiopia, Algeria, Morocco, India and China took part in organising the Syrian Cultural Day together with Syrian students. They are all part of the "Seeing with the Heart" project, which is aimed at interacting with people who have disabilities. The main goal of the project is to introduce children with disabilities to the diversity of the world and different cultures and traditions through direct contact and dialogue. This also includes enhancing children's knowledge of foreign languages. The "Seeing with the Heart" project is part of the "I Care - I Can!" social initiative programme. Quite symbolically, on the day of this event, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad paid a visit to Moscow.
The programme of international students’ social initiatives "I Care - I Can!" was developed by Dmitry Medvedev, Head of the UNN International Students Support Office, in order to promote tolerance in society and to improve the culture of communication with foreigners, to remove barriers to inter-ethnic communication, and to counter the ideas of extremism, racial intolerance and xenophobia. The programme participants are international students of Lobachevsky University who develop social and cultural projects and implement them through intercultural dialogue at various venues in Nizhny Novgorod.
