We all experience that the time has hardened. Not least by the ongoing economic crisis in Europe. People want to find scapegoats, explanations of why things happen. We, that is working with the history begins to recognize an echo from the past, when Nazism spread its evil messages in Europe and the Jewish people were held accountable for the situation created. What then happened was for many engraved forever, but for those who can tell about this, today, are not many left. We see that history tends to repeat itself. Out in the world, and in Europe. The intolerance and Xenophobia is increasing. We feel that we as teachers have a very important mission. But to carry out this mission in a way that makes a difference it is necessary to work across borders, to work together, share knowledge and experiences. You can not solve a Xenophobia by locking andisolating yourselfes. The main thought in our project is to create more understanding between different cultures, countries and through this knowledge prevent xenophobia. This will be done through developing and enhance methodological strategies. Working with other countries and learn more about their societies, cultures, histories will bring an understanding to both theachers and to students about other cultures in the world. The project activities will encourage and inspire the teachers to develop new strategies in education. It will be 8 schools involved in the project and the schools are from : Sweden, Portugal, Cypern, Italy, Espania, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Spain. All schools struggles with problems with Xenopobhia, but in different ways, and the schools and countries have different histories and backgrounds ackording to the main topic. The project activities will encourage and inspire the teachers to develop new strategies in education. In this it will be team of theachers who will work whith the project. In the beginning of the project it will be an introduction conference organized by each partner school. Every year we will have an evaluation and a presentation in each parner school for staff, students and pupils. Local authorities will also be invited. We have decided to travel and have SHORT-TERM JOINT STAFF TRAINING EVENTS. The teaching staff of all project partners will in the meetings attend two courses related to the main topic of our project Xenophobia. The topics of the short-term joint staff training events will be following: STRATEGIES IN EDUCATION, BACKGROUND, PREVENTING, METHODOLOGIES, PRACTICAL GUIDE, INNOVATION, PREJUDICES AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY. On those events it will be short-term exchanges of groups of students, those exchanges will always include a presentation created by the students between the meetings, related to the teachers course. For example, those presentations will be about "Xenophobia and racism in the history of each country", "minorities in our countries"., Are we all alike". The student will also work with pedagocical methods during the exchanges and the teachers can therefore directly evaluate. Every country will travel with 2 teacher and 2 students per meeting. Conferences as "open school", pupils exchanges, joint staff training events, conferences, evaluation conferences, exhibitions and exhibitions introducing project results will be open for public. We will also promote the project work through staff meetings, local media, Erasmus + dissemination platform and the Erasmus page on facebook. WIKI PAGE FOR TEACHING STAFF, the common platform for teaching staff, will be used to share information about the work in an around the project. A BLOG : Will be the common platform for students, it will be shared and a publicly accessible platform which in that way will disseminate the project and informing about project activities and the blog will also promote the project and the project partners. The final outcome, the E- book, "Our pedagogical tool box" will will be publicly accessible after the end of the project. It will serve as a source of educational and methodological materials/ tips to teachers to use, when they are working to prevent xenophobia in their schools. The link to the E-book will be published in the European dissemenation platform, the projects schools homepages, E-twinnig, Erasmus + facebook and other pages on the internet , which is used by theachers. Expected impact of the project will also be for the teachers and schools, to have better pedagocial resources for fighting xenophobia linked to the curriculum. That the general level of racism and xenophobia will be lowered in the participating schools. We expect that the schools also will be more aware of different and similar education issues and systems in the participating countries. We also expect our schools to to form a network with the other schools in Europe for future collaboration, exchange of educational materials and visits. If we all work together. We can prevent Xenophobia!
The ideas for the project arose as a result of reduced tolerance and increasing xenophobia in large parts of Europe. The main objective was therefore to make both adults working with education and youth increase their understanding of other people and cultures. Through understanding and experience, both tolerance and the opportunity to become aware of their own prejudices increases. In order to achieve this goal, another goal was to find and develop mutual educational methods and strategies in education to prevent xenophobia and intolerance. In this project it was 8 participation schools involved and the schools represent the following countries: Sweden, Portugal, Cypern, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Spain. All schools struggled with problems with Xenopobhia, but in different ways, and the schools and countries have different histories and backgrounds ackording to the main topic. Before every visit to the participating schools we had different activities with different topics, which everyone connected to the main project topic. It was both teacher activities and student activities, for example about minority groups in each country and famous people which has stood up against intolerance in different ways. Both staff, teachers and students who participated in the project, both through travel and through participation in activities linked to the project, have had a cultural exchange. Through this, their knowledge and understanding of the outside world has increased. the fear of the unknown, Xenophobia has thus decreased. During the project period, the project has been developed to include how to work with young people who are outside or at risk of getting out of society. Participants in the project have received training on how to work with new arrivals, students with downs syndrome, heterogeneity groups, youth who have been in youth care (/ youth prison, etc.). How important aftercare is in the last context. There have been new contacts, many certainly lifelong. Language skills have been developed especially in English, Greek, German and Spanish. The long-term benefits is that we gained new experiences and a method bank, for example there some of the activities during this project are very qualitative and can easily be used in education. We also think that activities and courses we taking part of can be used as training to teaching staff at schools and youth centers.