Invitation to Christmas Eve Without Borders OnLine
The Christmas Eve Without Borders OnLine project is another version of Christmas Eve without Borders that has been implemented by Institute of Schuman’s Thought over the past few years. It also involves building some relationship between Poles and foreigners, studying or working in Poland. Good and personal relationship will help the foreigners get to know our culture, tradition and religion. The aim of such actions is supporting the person in his or her process of gradual settling into culture of surrounding society, in other words of inculturation. The time of holidays is a good moment to take advantage of having lecture break at the university or a break in work, this time not to our homes, but to a meeting via the Internet on the first or second day of Easter.
The main guiding spirit of those two ideas is Robert Schuman. He is considered as the father-founder of The Community of the People of Europe. Schuman brought nations, institutions together and supported economic cooperation but he always emphasized that the most important is connecting people, building some relationship between them. Looking at the challenges of recent times, we can see that foreigners need not only some institutional help but above all an open heart of another human being. In Poland we are experienced in hosting young pilgrims of all around the globe who came to us on World Youth Day or European Meeting of Young People /Taize/.
All foreigners regardless of their origin, confession or assets are invited to Christmas Eve Without Borders to our homes. In the recent years thousands of participants have taken part in Christmas Eve Without Borders and Easter Without Borders. The foreign guests came, among others, from such countries as India, China, Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt, Armenia, Kazakhstan, African countries, the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine, Holland, Lithuania and many others. We have got some examples of spontaneous developing of such initiated relationships also after those holidays.
Institute of Schuman’s Thought proposes a structured form of post-holidays meetings in so-called International Schuman’s Groups as well using the Microsoft Teams web platform.