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1 The practice
2 Hints for an evaluation
2.1 Strenghts
The majority-targeting project elements can be considered highly successful, as indicated by the relatively large number of people that are regularly attending events on the cultures of minorities. It is impossible to quantify exactly how these events changed the perception of the Vietnamese and other minorities in the city. However, it seems obvious that they improved their knowledge about the cultural background of the migrants. It is safe to assume that increased knowledge will help to avoid the emergence of stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings.
Is the project innovative? Certainly, it will be possible to find all project elements described in another minority-targeting / intercultural project within the European Union. In the case of this project, the innovativeness should not be seen in the project elements per se, but in the library’s pioneering role in targeting the Vietnamese minority in the Czech Republic. In the city of Cheb, the Municipal Library is one of very few cultural institutions that target the Vietnamese inhabitants. The project can be considered a successful attempt to challenge the popular view of the Vietnamese as people, as nothing more than vendors on the market.
2.2 Critical Points
According to the librarian interviewed, the project was successful in targeting the majority population but failed to reach adult members of the Vietnamese minority. Contrary to initial expectations, the minority members showed hardly any interest in the acquired literature in Vietnamese language. Interestingly enough, this is also true in regard to Vietnamese children, who otherwise are regular guests of the library. Being mostly educated by Czech nannies, the Czech-born Vietnamese students in elementary schools and the high school prefer Czech literature over Vietnamese.
There might be a number of reasons why Vietnamese adults did not react more responsively to the offers of the library. The most important one seems to be the enormous workload of most Vietnamese families, which leaves little time for such “luxuries” as a visit to a library. Considering the most urgent problems of the community include lack of language skills, exploitation by “bosses” of the clans, uncertain economic future and a growing educational and linguistic distance between them and the Czech-born younger generation (see background report [hpertext]) ), one might argue that the library activities failed to identify the true needs of the project beneficiaries. However, the point has to be made that most of the mentioned problems are beyond the competence of a municipal library. The library’s role would probably increase if it could act as one element within a network of institutions, which deal with the integration of the Vietnamese minority. As long as such a network is not existent, the described project is at least a positive attempt to break the community’s social isolation. In addition to this, it seems possible that the interests in books in Vietnamese language will increase when the life situation of the migrants has changed.
2.3 Lessons Learnt
- Despite of their large number in the Czech Republic’s border region to Germany, there are only very few projects that seek to target the Vietnamese minority.
- Due to the very specific life situation of some minorities, it is not always possible to integrate minority members only with the help of those institutions (libraries, social clubs, associations) that organise the social life of the minority. The library should nevertheless be considered a very suitable space for intercultural communication. It should actively target members of minority communities.
- The project is mainly the result of two active people, who knew how to contact interesting speakers, raise money, and were willing to invest a lot of energy. As it is often the case, this crucial role of individuals makes it difficult to transfer the practice to places where such a person is lacking.
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