The project entitled "Our differences as a unifying force" includes young people aged from 15 to 20 years old, professionals of maistream and special education needs schools coming from the United Kingdom, France and Poland. Those people are from varied backgrounds. The Polish partner caters for students aged 6 to 16 and has developped its own curriculum in which physical education is largely represented. ZSOS is a sports schools which deals with athletics and handball in national and international competitions. It will be the firts time they take part to programmes funded by the European Commission. The English partner caters for pupils with special educational needs. Calthorpe Academy is a reknowed institution and a model of special education teaching methods. The MFR caters for vocational trainings in health and social care to people. When students graduate, they find occupations in medical or care homes looking after different publics. The number of people directly involved in the project is 212 people during the 2 year programme. The indirect impact on people will be even greater. The activities of the project rely mainly on the participation of the different pupils mentioned above in events based on the olympic games in which the olympic spirit will prevail. The project will give students as many chances to compete in the games and therefore approach values such as adversity, tolerance, respect, and opening on the world and others. Another specificity is that both Polish and French schools have developped partnership with local special needs schools, those links will continue well beyond the 2 years of the programme and will be more occasions to include these children into the mainstream system. Each country will be in charge of the preparation of its own events. They will cover sports, health and arts activities. Communication between partners will be developped thanks to internet and the social networks. The promotion of the events on a local level (press, local authorities, institutions, general public, parents,...) will be ensured by each school in the objective of dissemination. The impacts will be measured by the acquisition of professional and language skills, social promotion of the participants with special education needs and the chance to live a rich and rewarding experience.
The project came to life through the coming together of the partners networks. Their common and main interests lie with fighting against presumptions and differences. The English partner (Calthorpe Academy-Birmingham) is a special needs academy for children and adolescents. The French partner (MFR Saint-Sauveur Lendelin) shapes youths with less opportunities to work as people aids. The inclusion in the project of a school specialized in forming high level sportsmen and women in Poland (ZSOS N°1 Cracovie) represented an important diversity as regards to the participants and was meant to bring another vision on the inclusion of special needs people. The aim was ambitious because there existed a huge difference in between the youths involved in the activities. The Polish participants were very orientated and powered by competition, French youths were in tune with social questions and quite, or very far from, sports challenges, and English participants were special needs youths. The challenge was huge! The project had many objectives but the main one was to work on inclusion of special needs youngsters. The project also aimed at comparing and analyzing different ways of working and interacting with special needs populations, the end product being a toolbox allowing all professionals working in Europe to adapt their activities to special needs youths. The number of direct participants in the project was 212 students and professionals over 24 months (1st September 2015 until the first of September 2017) this, not counting the considerable amount of people who were undirectly involved or touched by the project. The activities were organized around three themes : sport, well-being and arts and culture. The youths and professionals participated in 6 mobilities over the course of two years, 3 “ambassador mobilities” and 3 “main event” mobilities. The ambassador mobility (C1) consisted in evolving in the host country with a small group of students in order to prepare the main event mobility (C2). The main event mobility brought together a much bigger group of participants. The activities, based on the different themes, relied on the participation of all of the students. During each exchange, activities were conceived so that each student may take part with equal chances of success. The main objective was to develop for the entire group notions such as tolerance, helping others, respect, sharing, open-mindedness, all of this in the spirit of adversity and competition (as relative as this notion was during this project). For certain students, a step back and empathy were needed so as to interact with some of the participants. This project had an exceptional dynamic throughout its two years and helped develop new skills for the students and professionals. It allowed the schools to work with new partners and form new bonds in their regions. The extensions of this project will be consequent and activities between new partners are already being set up. Work collaboration between the partners was key and the exchanges were very frequent and in a truly collective spirit. The three partner schools are already engaged in depositing new projects, including new schools. The dissemination of this work and the projects benefits is well and truly efficient. Some undirect beneficiaries of the project are also engaging in thought on the benefits and impacts of an Erasmus + project in their activities and for the students they work with. An important communication was made during each event by the papers, internet, social media, information meetings, general assemblies… It must however be noted that the project had some difficulties such as the maintaining of the website by an exterior partner and the terrorist attacks which made more complex or completly cancelled some youths participations in the project due to the parents angst. The impacts of such a project are huge for each of the three partner schools. It has especially allowed to develop a culture of tolerance and accepting of other and their differences, which was our main objective. The inclusion of special needs youths or youths with less opportunities was at the heart of the project and all of the objectives were reached. All of the partners wish to thank the ERASMUS + progam for its financial and technical support, without which this brilliant project would never have existed.