Refugees in Our Thoughts and Hearts interactive exhibition

Its core is the works of schoolchildren and students around the world, participants of the Opening Hearts and Minds to Refugees international competition. The organizers are the Federal Research and Methodology Center in the field of psychology and tolerance education and UNESCO.

How do young people see the image of a migrant and a refugee, do they understand their problems and how can they personally help their peers? Young people from 181 countries gave creative answers to these questions: through drawing, filming videos and writing stories about refugees.

The competition was launched as part of the educational project on social and cultural adaptation of migrants which is already implemented in 11,000 schools of the Associated Schools of UNESCO network (ASPnet). The winners were awarded in July 2017 in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

A special nomination was established by the Tolerance Center. The winners were young people from Portugal, the Arab Emirates, Belgium, India, Spain, Togo, Azerbaijan. The work of the school team from France was especially remarkable among the many works considered by all the professionals of the Center. The team created a collage where they combined their own faces with the faces of migrants that they found in local newspapers.

These works can be seen in Moscow until the end of 2017 at the Refugees in Our Thoughts and Hearts interactive exhibition at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre.

The Tolerance Center plans to continue to cooperate with UNESCO in the field of mutual integration of foreign citizens from among refugees and host communities, adaptation of effective world practices in this field and prevention of xenophobia among young people.

"We hope that our programme will help educate the young generation free from racial, national and religious stereotypes and at the same time preserve their own values and culture in a difficult situation concerning migration and assimilation."

Alexander Boroda, Director-General of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.