We Are No Strangers: Unique Project of Slovo 21 Organisation Bringing Foreigners and Majority Society Closer Together

What are foreigners who live in Czechia like? The project called We Are No Strangers (Nejsme si cizí) has an answer to this question. The aim of the project is to present high-quality and interesting information to prove that stereotypes and lies about foreigners circulating in the public space are false. A new information portal nejsmesicizi.cz launched in May this year is also a part of this project. New articles and videos will be posted on the website on a regular basis.

The project is a response to the growing number of foreigners in the Czech Republic. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, there were 836 thousand people from different cultural backgrounds in the CR by the end of 2023, which in itself poses a challenge for the majority society, which has seen a rise in negative attitudes towards foreigners. “That is why today more than ever it is necessary to bring Czech and foreigners closer together and to provide unbiased information on what the foreigners living in Czechia today are truly like,” explains project manager Jelena Silajdžić.

In addition to articles and videos, Slovo 21 has prepared a number of innovative activities to help Czechs and foreigners get a better understanding of each other. In cooperation with Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences there will be a workshop for future journalists, helping them cover the topic of migration and foreigners in a professional and objective way. Research on the perception of integration will be conducted among Czechs and foreigners, as no real data on the Czechs’ view of integration has been obtained yet.

The project also includes an interactive travelling exhibition Little Shoes (Botičky). Using the artefact of children’s shoes, it presents the fates of Ukrainian refugees from children’s perspective in order to raise public awareness and empathy. “Foreigners in the Czech Republic are not just statistical numbers, they are real people with often difficult stories,” says Silajdžić.

The Slovo 21 association has 20 years of experience working in the field of integration. They help third country nationals gain the necessary self-confidence to be able to deal with various practical issues related to life in the Czech Republic, mainly through various educational activities. They also organise activities whose aim is to bring foreigners and the majority society closer together, one of them being the Family Next Door project which gathers Czechs and foreigners through communal dining. We Are No Strangers project runs from 1^st January 2024 to 31^st December 2025 and is co-financed by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF).