ENHANCING CULTURAL MEDIATORS TRAINING USING NON-MODERATED LEARNING SCENARIOS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

During the last years many interventions and projects have been implemented in the EU promoting cohesive interaction within multicultural societies. Training, educating and employing intercultural mediators has been among the measures taken to promote migrant integration. Looking at the current situation of the intercultural mediation we can still expect improvement in professional training for social workers in the intercultural societies. Many of educational and researching online tools are being created during international projects SONETOR (2011-13) and TIME (2014-15). Training needs of future cultural mediators, whose task is to assist in solving problems associated with the immigrants presence in the host country, certainly requires prior identification of the necessary competencies: knowledge, skills and abilities, which are subject to effective action in this field. The aim of the first stage study was to build a coherent and complementary image of needs and current state of intercultural mediation in Europe that is the base to create a training programs improving necessary knowledge, qualifications and competences for intercultural mediators. Those areas were analyzed during both SONETOR and TIME projects. Then, the examples of training scenarios for educational programs were prepared, used in intercultural mediation pilot workshops and applied in five European countries. Compact effects of theoretical and practical projects studies of this issue will be presented in this article, as well as further discussion of non-moderated learning scenarios effectiveness. Finally, there will be presented state-of-the-art of applying similar educational approach to online training of cultural mediators with the use of social media and networking.