Escape to diversity

About the project

Escape to diversity is a project that is being implemented by Logos together with partners from V4 countries. At this project, we will gather youth workers from Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia in order to educate them about the usage of escape rooms as a tool. We will dedicate this project to topics of tolerance and inclusion. In May 2021, we will meet in Poltava where we will spend 10 days learning about the usage of escape rooms for educational purposes. At the end of the training course, we will build 3 working escape rooms, which we will open for external guests to play. After the training course, we will release the manual on how to create escape rooms for educational purposes which will be available for anybody. This project is possible thanks to the support of the Visegrad fund.

Visegrad Fund

The Fund is an international donor organization, established in 2000 by the governments of the Visegrad Group countries—Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to promote regional cooperation in the Visegrad region (V4) as well as between the V4 region and other countries, especially in the Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership regions.

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The main issue that we want to focus on is low level of knowledge and acceptance of different cultures and nationalities in our countries. Recent events in our countries and generally in eastern Europe showed that there is a rise of intolerance, xenophobia and racism. Minorities and migrants, are perceived with hate and often marginalised both by individuals, groups and officials (http://bit.ly/vifued1, http://bit.ly/vifued2). Levels of discrimination towards people of different ethnics are high in:

Additionally Ukraine is one of the close neighbours for V4 countries, but it is still unknown and often misunderstood. Perception of Ukrainians in Poland is quite bad and has negative tendency over last 30 years with 32% of Poles having negative perception of Ukrainians. Czechia and Slovakia have problems with discrimination of Roma and other minorities. We want to influence on the negative trend of intolerance and misunderstanding towards people of different ethnicity, especially concerning minorities.

Learn more about the cultures of project partner countries as well as about the tolerance and inclusion

Reduce negative effects of intolerance, xenophobia and racism

Learn about such tool as escape rooms and how it can be implemented in educational processes

Increase the mobility of young people living in the territory of the Visegrad Four countries

Phase	Description of the phase
01/07/2020–14/05/2021	Preparation of the project's activities
15/05/2021–25/05/2021	Training course on creation of escape rooms for educational purposes in Poltava
23/05/2021–23/05/2021	Open event during the training course. Link for the open event https://www.facebook.com/events/777720896384135
26/05/2021–25/06/2021	Preparation and release of the manual on creation of escape rooms for intercultural education

This training course was funded by the International Visegrad Fund in 2020 and it took a long year for us to implement it. We had to deal with the coronavirus epidemic, travel restrictions and one of the trainers getting COVID on the last day before the activity. But we managed it!

Though our original intention was to do it in Kyiv, in the end, we implemented it in Poltava. This is a beautiful city with amazing people. Thanks to the professionalism of our organizers – Veronika Kurkina and Dmitriy Markov, the training course was implemented flawlessly.

The idea of the training course was similar to other training courses we made on this topic. Participants learned about escape rooms, went to play several of those to practice and then built 3 amazing rooms of their own.

On 23rd of May, we made an open event to invite locals to play the rooms that were made by participants and to promote ideas of inclusion, diversity and human rights. Event was attended by 25 people and together with training course participants, they played escape rooms over 15 times.

Teams that created escape rooms

Sürgünlik

This is an escape room that tells about the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944. Though being quite difficult emotionally this room was extremely interesting to visit and play. Players learned about facts and stories about the genocide of the Crimean Tatar nation.

Hata na tata

In this escape room, players will have a chance to think about equal distribution of family responsibilities, appreciate a woman’s work as a mother, a wife and a working person. Understand difficulties and their effect on mental health.

Broadcast studio

Creators of this escape room worked on the important topic of religious understanding. Players will step into the shoes of journalists who need to stop the publishing of the discriminative article.

Escape rooms for education
Educaitonal escape rooms creation guide

In 2021 we held a training course "Escape to Diversity" supported by the Visegrad Fund where we created a short guide on how to build educational escape rooms. Check it below to understand how you start making an educational escape room, how you choose a room, make puzzles and design interesting story. This guide also contains links to video tutorials that we made to help youth workers build their educational escape rooms.