The idea for our project came to light after the fundraising ‘Day of Olga Havlová’ organized by Gymnázium Olgy Havlové in cooperation with Výbor dobré vůle Olgy Havlové in the Czech Republic. This fundraising event not only contributed to an awareness of non-profit institutions in the region but also enabled financial support to these organizations, and led to a wonderful active involvement of not just our students and teachers but our students’ parents too all brought together through charity. Inspiration also came from a students' visit to Catalonia where they enjoyed a video of a Charity Event in Prats. Our topic was agreed on, and other partners invited to join (our eTwinning partners Slovakia and Turkey) a previous project partner from Italy and a new partner from Germany. Fortunately, all our involved organizations have previous experience with charity work at various levels. The aim of our project is to cooperate with either charity organizations, or with those who are in need and subsequently provide regular help, increase public awareness and organize fund raising events to support local and regional non-profit institutions, old people´s homes, people in need, children with special needs etc. based on each partner’s national or regional specifics. Students will actively take part in various volunteering activities and will continuously learn about other cultures and charity work within a broad European context. This will, we hope, lead to development of routines and approaches to be further practiced after our project ends. Project participants will document their work and provide final audiovisual, literary and artistic outputs (for example calendars, booklets, documentaries) as well as advising their peers. We will also organize local and international events to raise money. This money will be donated to those who are in need in cooperation with official charity organizations in compliance with individual national legislative systems. Altogether there will be approximately 250 students and 50 teachers working together on our project. Students are aged between 14 to 20. Teachers are qualified in various subjects: foreign languages, Art, Music, Social Studies, Biology, and yet all participants desire to extend their knowledge, improve language skills, IT skills, and positively communicate with the media. To summarize, the main aim of our project is active students´ involvement in addressing current social issues, their contribution to the processes of charity and support aimed at those in need and increasing awareness within not only local but a European dimension.
„Solidarity without frontiers“ was our two-year Erasmus+ project aimed at encouraging active volunteering and providing assistance where necessary. Ours was a partnership of six institutions from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Germany. Within each partner institution, approximately 50 students participard in the project activities and between 3 to 8 teachers in each partner country. We are pleased to say that throughout all our partner institutions, scores of students or pupils willingly volunteered, helping those who needed it as and where necessary. Fortunately, all partner institutions had a variety of previous experience with charity work, volunteering, fund raising events, however our project greatly enhansed all their previous activities to date.Our project aim was to undertake various charity activities to be carried out by teams of students and teachers from each participating school / college. Indeed, within some activities we even involved students’ families to further encourage inclusion. Naturally, our focus differed considerably depending on each participating partners' specific charity organizations chosen. Another of our aims was effectively incorparating social networks, together with learning new ICT tools whilst progressively working on our project results. As expected, our project raised our students’ awareness to the fact that society is an inclusive activity, whereby tolerance is not merely a word or definition which they have to learn, but an action that they need to engage in and display. We are pleased to say that by the end of our project, we do believe that we reached this target. Consequently, we feel that all of our participating students, and the involeved teachers, gained unforgettable and invaluable life-long experiences, together with some new skills. Within the project Erasmus+ six organizations cooperated actively: secondary schools: Gymnázium Olgy Havlové, Ostrava, Czech Republic, HANSE-Berufskolleg, Lemgo, Germany,.Institut Castell del Quer, Prats de Llucanes, Spain, Liceo Scientifico Corradino D’Ascanio, Montesilvano, Italy and primary school- Základná škola Sibírska, Prešov, Slovakia. We managed to complete all of our planned activities, and we even took up new unplanned ones, with further enriching impact on students. We visited old people´s homes and spoke with older generations and listened to their life stories. We taught elderly people new games or gave them English lessons, or we taught them some useful basic computer skills.Working with children with special needs was an absolutely, and overwhelming new experience for our students. They actually came to undersand how difficult and stressful the life for such families is, realising that despite all the problems, they do not and cannot give up. Now our students view them with a new found admiration and respect. Care was given at various animal shelters too. We walked dogs, tried to find new homes for them or we joined some campaigns to support animal shelters within an entire country. Adult students gladly donated blood. Almost all our partner schools helped to organize collections for Food bank. We are proud to say that our students worked in their free time, in the evening and at weekends and they encountered and saw life from many new and different perspectives. Whatsmore, they learnt about the essential work and activities of charity organizations and other non-profit associations.As encouraged, our students were constantly active on social network sites and used them effectively to share their peer-to-peer experiences and they also improved their computer and language skills.All of our planned activities and results were reached: videoclips made during mobilities and workshops, a videodocumentary about life of the handicapped or owners of an animal shelter, a booklet documenting a collection of memories about the 1960‘ s which is our common product, many fundraising events, and assistance at animal shelters.We firmly believe that our project has had a very positive impact on all of our participatin project students, their families and those involved teachers, not to forget the benefits to our participating schools, and the many non-profit organizations and other institutuions we cooperated with.Our students have reflected on the invaluable experiences felt, and a large percent of them intend to continue volunteering.