The objective of the intercultural competency development workshops that CIIR has been conducting since 2014 is to promote the understanding of basic concepts on interculturalism, as well as the historical context, roles and procedures through which the actors in intercultural spaces currently interrelate. In a first stage, these workshops were aimed at municipal officials from various municipalities in the region of La Araucanía. As of 2015, these education initiatives were expanded to the training of teachers and also Ministry of Education officials working in contexts with intercultural presence. These workshops use a methodology with a dynamic approach both in theory and practice. Thus, participatory and experiential work is encouraged, in order to build learning from the experiences, contexts and previous knowledge of the workshop participants, promoting dialogue between the different perspectives that they brought with them.
In addition, this training initiative sought to offer a space for training in the field of interculturalism and educational policies. This implied, for example, addressing the scope related to rights and the development of intercultural bilingual education in Chile, facilitating the development of competencies that promote the understanding of the importance of establishing intercultural relations that tend to mutual recognition and promote work performance, competent and relevant leadership, based on the valuation of the socio-cultural diversity present in Chile. The workshops addressed different topics such as culture and identity, cultural diversity, recognition and interculturalism, representations of the other and intercultural communication, providing theoretical and methodological tools that allow teachers and other professionals to better address the challenges not only of interaction with Indigenous Peoples, but also with the migratory phenomenon. This implies new tasks for an educational system that was intended to be uniform.