Join the celebration Parents, showcase the traditional stories from your culture and use them as bed-time stories to enchant your children! Learn a new language with a native speaker of your community and practice it with him/her regularly! During your trip to a new country, go off the beaten track, mingle with the locals and discover things about their culture that the tour-guide is ignorant of! Propose your cities to organize festivals dedicated to their cultural minorities and featuring their gastronomy, dances, music, literature, costumes. Invite music schools to give concerts with multicultural music that combine tradition with foreign influence. Invite artists who lived in a different country of their own to give interviews, explaining the positive influence their “hosting” culture has had on their work and artistic evolution. Teachers, encourage your students to become pen-pals with students from different geographic and religious backgrounds or through social media to discuss their experiences, differences and things they have in common. Homework assignment: Dedicate a class on how cultures have influenced one another : a Chinese proverb can also be found in the Arabic tradition; backgammon is also played in Iran and Greece and tattoos are used in South America and Africa

Cultural diversity and identity Cultural and linguistic diversity, while stimulating respect for cultural identity, traditions and religions, is essential to the development of an Information Society based on the dialogue among cultures and regional and international cooperation. It is an important factor for sustainable development. UNESCO emphasises the value of cultural and linguistic diversity in all its work. It is also concerned to ensure that new media platforms make content available which is relevant to the lives of all communities and individuals, including the poor and marginalised. Content of local relevance, and content which is locally produced, are important in this context. Action Line C8 has brought together stakeholders that are concerned with these aspects of access to knowledge, and has focused in particular on heritage, local content, linguistic diversity and disability.