DVV Cooperation “History Competitions” Enters Fourth Phase
Since 2017, DVV International, Körber-Stiftung and five local NGOs in the partner countries have been working together in the project “History Competitions”. The current project phase – already the fourth – expands its scope to include teacher trainings. In the past the project focused on establishing history competitions in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
The current project phase aims to improve the quality of history teaching in schools by promoting the critical teaching of history. Teachers shall be empowered to confidently address controversial issues in the classroom, and to also teach their students how to detect and study propagandistic history narratives.
One key output will be a toolkit for teachers dealing with historical propaganda in the media and in research. It will also provide guidelines on how to distinguish reliable historical sources from false ones. To ensure that the toolkit meets the needs of history teachers, a desk research will be carried out in all project countries. It will investigate the current state of teacher training and school curricula in relation to history-based propaganda. As the circumstances in the project countries vary, the toolkit will be adapted to the different country contexts.
Of course, history competitions will continue to play an important role in this phase of the project. As in previous years, all competitions will be held under a common theme. Returning to the focus of the toolkit, this year's theme is "Exploring History-Based Propaganda in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine". Based on the overarching theme, each country will develop its own national competition topic.
Youth activities are also part of the project, as promoting international cooperation is in the project's DNA. As in previous years, a history camp for the winners of the competition will take place following the national award ceremonies. Participants from all four project countries will have the opportunity to apply for the camp to meet new people and work on current historical issues related to propaganda.
The project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office in the framework of their “Civil Society Cooperation” programme. Initially, Belarus was part of the project coalition but had to withdraw from the project due to the current political crisis. Armenia joined the project in 2021.