On 19 March 2018, a one-day peer learning workshop took place in the secondary vocational school "Bećo Bašić" in Plav. This school is a mentor school for the vocational pilot schools cluster. The event gathered around 25 teachers, pupils and representatives from the Plav local community. On 26 January 2018 a similar event took place  and the school principal, 5 teachers (3 from the secondary and 2 from the elementary school), 50 students, 3 parents and 2 local community representatives as well as the representative of the school blog "Blue Bell" all took part.

The objective of both events was to promote a whole school approach to developing key democratic competences among both school staff and the local community. Plav is recognized as a good example of a multi-ethnic environment where different ethnics groups and different religions have lived together for centuries. Thus, the school in Plav is one of the best places to spread the message of tolerance, diversity, and inter-ethnic dialogue.

The mentor school team has already received trainers training for competences for a democratic culture. Members of the team organised a number of interactive sessions covering basic principles of democratic culture and its contextualisation in the learning process. The school selected three competencies to develop within the school and the local community: valuing cultural diversity, civil-mindedness, and conflict resolution skills and has developed activities around them.

Participants were very enthusiastic about the workshop and evaluated it as very instructive and beneficial.

The workshop “Empowerment of democratic culture in the schools”  was organised as part of the European Union/Council of Europe Horizontal Facility Action “Fostering a democratic school culture in Montenegro”.