Registration for the Five Steps programme is now open

How can students of today accomplish their own social project, make it big enough for their local neighbourhood or city? What do they need to make it happen?

Aspiration, a team and an application for the Five Steps to Tolerance programme which was created and launched in 2013 at the Tolerance Center of the Jewish Museum. All classes are free of charge. In 2018, the programme will run for the last time. Moscow schoolchildren and students have a unique opportunity to gain knowledge, skills and launch their social project with the support of the Tolerance Center team.

What does the programme teach?

The structure of the programme resembles a ladder. Starting their way along the road of tolerance, the participants go through the steps consisting of several modules. Different formats like games, film discussions or trying to solve a legal case teach the fundamentals of positive social initiatives. All classes are held in a training format allowing each participant to gain experience and draw their own conclusions.

Each step has its own theme: about leadership, intercultural relations, respect. The first step called I am a Citizen gives the children a chance to choose a social issue and offer a solution through good deeds. During the second step, I am a Youth Leader, the participants come up with theme events dedicated to celebrating days of volunteering, peace and aid. The third My Social Awareness step teaches about rights and responsibilities, enables discussions about labour relations regarding minors, legislation and responsible behaviour involving extremist actions.  As a result, they develop large social projects. During the fourth Masters of Good Deeds step, the participants learn how to build relations within a team to achieve high results and how to promote their own projects to receive public support.

Over 4 years, more than 15 000 schoolchildren and students from 100 educational organizations in Moscow have organised more than 150 social events, held 200 theme events at their place of study and developed about 100 social projects for the city.

By doing small good deeds, the participants taught senior residents in their neighborhood to pay for services through electronic kiosks, walked dogs from shelters, talked about different professions in a playful way in kindergartens, organised charity fairs, visited veterans, collected waste paper to buy gifts for orphans, held adaptive classes and meetings together with their teachers with students from remedial teaching groups. The young people also organised large events like the Planet of Joy inclusive festival for children and youth with disabilities and their peers, Bringing Happiness creative workshops for children in orphanages, the Alphabet Road for junior classes project, a Life is for Making Good Deeds skills and knowledge race.

"Each year, I am amazed by more and more brilliant ideas brought by the children in the course of the programme," says Anna Makarchuk, director of the Tolerance Center, “It is great to see how young people are interested in good stories that they themselves initiate, come up with and do! The future of our country is definitely in the hands of these young people. And I really want to see many new teams join us in 2018 together with their teachers."

The Tolerance Center of the Jewish Museum opens registration for the  5 Steps to Tolerance programme for schoolchildren of 8-11th class and undergraduate students for 2018. Participation for children is free, the programme is implemented with the support of the Public Relations Committee of the Moscow Government and is recognized as the best project in the Consent and Interaction nomination in 2015 and 2016.

The hallmark of the 5 Steps to Tolerance programme is multifaceted communication with educational organizations. Students are interested in classes and training, team leaders receive an additional resource for educational work, and the staff solves global problems of preventing extremism and increasing constructive social activity for young people. The Tolerance Center communicates with each target audience in its own way offering what it really needs.

In 2018, the programme will run for the last time. However, over the years it has been in such demand and so successful, that the experts of the Tolerance Center have decided to pass it on to educators of educational organizations.

The final step of the 5 Steps to Tolerance programme involves professional development with a state-recognised certificate. As always at the Center, the training is  80% practice-oriented: teachers will learn how to conduct training programmes by attending them together with groups and analyzing the technologies in methodology seminars.

More information about all modules, content and class schedules can be found via the link

To enrol in the programme and get the schedule, please call 8 495 645 0550 (ext. 220) or write to tc@jewish-museum.ru. Elena Gorinova, project manager, will gladly answer any question.