Fairyland is for Everyone

The main project activties are the creation and publishing of a fairy tale collection called Fairyland is for Everyone, designing lesson plans for each tale, and the development of collaboration with other NGOs in order to introduce pedagogical work with the tales. The project is innovative, because this is the first fairy tale collection in Hungarian which includes rewritten versions of popular tales with heroes belonging to minorities or marginalized social groups and which brings up important social issues (e.g. poverty, family violence) to assist pedagogical work on these with children.

Due to intolerance increasingly driven by social division, hate speech, and the marginalisation of ethnic and sexual minorities in Hungary, it is important to educate children through tolerance, solidarity, and diversity. In addition, it is vital to offer them models of humane, non-violent behaviour.

We published a fairy tale book that addresses social and human rights issues for children. It can also support parents and teachers to help children understand discrimination, injustice, exclusion, and violence.

The target groups are children between 6-12 years old, parents, teachers, and NGOs. Parents can work with their children individually on sensitive social issues by reading and discussing the stories. We designed lesson plans for teachers and facilitators which offer pedagogical support to work with the stories.

We brought important social and pedagogical issues into public discourse; our work inspired individuals and public figures to speak out on these issues. The book has become an important social and cultural artefact, as well as a symbol of protest against oppressive, stigmatising, and exclusionary political discourses.

We are negotiating with international publishers interested in publishing the book in different languages. We expect editions translated into English, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, and Czech to be published within a year. We will pursue more international publications and continue to connect with organizations interested in using the book in their pedagogical programmes.