The project „Say NO to indifference“ deals with the topic refugees and migrants in Europe. We do not only want to have a look at the hard facts such as numbers, laws and regulations we also would like to discover the emotional side of this topic in terms of attitudes, fears, burdens, expectations, feelings and problems as well as highlighting the advantages of living in a multicultural, open-minded and united Europe. For quite a while now Europe has to deal with huge waves of refugees coming because of political or religious persecution, war, terror or just in the hope for a better life. However, the question arises how Europe and its member states can cope with the situation and the resulting challenges. To accommodate and integrate those refugees presents a major challenge to the EU. Moreover, it produces a wrong understanding and xenophobia which cannot be a basis for a peacefully living together. Hence we are a group of seven countries from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey willing to make our students aware of the topic and dealing with it in more detail. All of our participating countries are in a certain way affected by the topic: Estonia has a long tradition of living together with a Russian speaking minority; therefore they have extensive experience in the integration of Russian-speaking children into the Estonian society and thus can be a role model for how to avoid the causes for the current conflict in the Ukraine. Finland and the Finnish school system are known for well-established and good programs of how to integrate refugees/migrants. The German school has established special classes for refugees teaching them the language, social and cultural aspects. Further, the town has got a great influx of refugees from e.g. Africa, Syria and Afghanistan. Besides, nearby the Italian school is one of the largest refugee camps in Europe, thus they are directly affected by the incoming refugees and the political situation. In Poland there are many “euro-orphans”, children left with relatives because their parents have gone, usually in pursuit of better career prospects. The Slovakian school is situated next to the Ukraine border; therefore they receive many European refugees of the Ukraine. Finally, Turkey has a big migration flow in and out of the country. We can also examine a huge amount of prosperity-related and forced migration and the arrival of Syrian refugees. With all those experiences we set up a project with the aims to found a students' action group promoting the notion “Say NO to indifference", to produce a long film documentary, to establish a homepage with blogs and do a flashmob on the UN Refugee Day. Other outcomes will be e.g. flyers, interviews, Explainity clips or a booklet. Additionally there is the aim to educate our students to be active European citizen, to take up responsibility, to participate and to form their own opinion. Further to be sensitive and responsive to the public opinion and to be able to reply with knowledge as well as to get a feeling for the problems and situations of refugees/migrants within their own country and Europe. Besides, our students will enhance and develop their basic and transversal skills. On the other hand the teachers will develop methods to promote the idea of Europe being open to all cultures and to be a role model regarding the handling of refugees/migrants, to integrate and support them. Additionally, we want to inform the society, politicians and organizations to get a deeper knowledge of the problems the refugees and migrants have to face, to pull the same string in terms of a common European policy and to be aware of the important role and responsibility of Europe within the world and above all that xenophobia has no place in Europe. Finally, we want to support refugees and migrants to get a clear view of living in Europe so that they won’t have wrong expectations and being integrated more easily. To reach all those aims we meet up in every participating school to be able to work in cross-national groups, to work on the outcomes and to meet refugees and migrants, to visit refugee camps, organizations and meet representatives. Between the meetings we will work on the project tasks. On the homepage, in the blog, due to films and the students’ action group the results will be made accessible to a wider public and by sending the materials (films, articles) to organizations and politicians the outcomes will be widely distributed and they are displayed in all schools. The long term benefits are the enhancement of different key skills and competences which help students to be better prepared in their future life. Additionally, the outcomes are lasting resources for teaches. But above all, the expected long term impacts will be that the participants have a greater knowledge, understanding and awareness of the topic, the European values and that students are active citizens in a multicultural, united and peaceful Europe.
The project “Say NO to indifference“ dealt with the topic refugees and migrants in Europe. Hence, we, schools of seven countries from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey were willing to make our students aware of the topic and dealing with it in more detail to reduce prejudices, xenophobia but to promote tolerance, openness and to support active students. At the beginning the students compared in cross national groups important facts and figures about refugees and what the laws and regulations are in each country. Out of those results they made explainity videos which can be seen on our webpage http://www.jfs.de/welcometoeurope/?page_id=81. However, we did not only want to have a look at the hard facts such as numbers or laws we also discovered the emotional side of this topic in terms of attitudes, fears, expectations and problems as well as having had a look at the advantages of living in a multicultural, open-minded and united Europe to deal with the new situation of having a huge amount of refugees in Europe. To accommodate and integrate those refugees is a major challenge to the EU and the attitudes in each of our partner countries and schools differed widely and thus we had a look at those aspects as well. We had panel discussions, talked to different people such as social workers, representatives of refugee organisations, and to the refugees and migrants themselves and made several films and interviews (The videos can also be watched on our webpage). Additionally, we had the aim to educate our students to be active European citizen, to take up responsibility, to participate and to form their own opinion; therefore, we founded a student’s action group with guiding principles. For this action group the students created a logo and made T-shirts. In the last meeting all students from the different schools did a walk through the Polish hosting city to show their results with banner, flyers and talking to people. All of our participating countries had been in a certain way affected by the topic: Estonia has a long tradition of living together with a Russian speaking minority; therefore they have extensive experience in the integration of Russian-speaking children. Finland is known for well-established and good programs of how to integrate migrants. The German school has established classes for refugees teaching them the language, social and cultural aspects. Besides, nearby the Italian school is one of the largest refugee camps in Europe, thus they are directly affected by the incoming refugees. In Poland there are many “euro-orphans”, children left with relatives because their parents have gone abroad, usually in pursuit of better life prospects. The Slovakian school is situated next to the Ukraine border; therefore they receive many refugees from there. Finally, Turkey has a big migration flow in and out of the country. We can also examine a huge amount of prosperity-related migration. With all those experiences we set up a project with the notion “Say NO to indifference", to produce a film and interviews, to establish a homepage, explainity videos, posters, flyers and more to save the results and to share it with other people. The students are now more sensitive and responsive to the public opinion and are able to reply with knowledge as well. The students and the teachers also got a feeling for the problems and situations of refugees and migrants within their own country and Europe. Besides, our students developed their basic and transversal skills further. On the other hand the teachers also enhanced their methods to promote the idea of Europe, being open to all cultures and to be a role model regarding the handling of refugees/migrants, to integrate and support them. Additionally, we wanted to inform the society to get a deeper knowledge of the problems the refugees/migrants have to face, to pull the same string in terms of a common European policy and to be aware of the important role and responsibility of Europe within the world and above all that xenophobia has no place in Europe. To reach all those aims we met up in every participating school to work in cross-national groups, to work on the outcomes and to meet refugees/migrants, to visit refugee camps, organizations and meet representatives. Between the meetings we worked on the project tasks. On the webpage, in the blog, due to films and the students’ action group we made the results accessible to a wider public and the outcomes were distributed and displayed in all schools. The long term benefits are the enhancement of different key skills and competences which help students to be better prepared in their future life. Additionally, the outcomes are lasting resources for teaches. But above all, the long term impacts are that the participants have a greater knowledge, understanding and awareness of the topic, the European values and that the students are active citizens in a multicultural, united and peaceful Europe.