Different surveys have illustrated how people's lifestyle has evolved in the past century. Indeed people tend to be less active than fifty or sixty years ago (the number of people who never exercise has increased by 3% since 2009 - from 39% to 42% - according to Eurobarometer on Sport and Physical Activity) and their diet has also evolved. In fact, teenagers, nowadays tend to be more fond of junk food, fries, sodas, candies and chocolate than vegetables, fish, etc. These unhealthy food choices result in the increase in overweight and/or obese people (According to the OECD, there are more and more obese people from 8% to 24.5% within the EU - with 24.5% in the UK - ). Therefore the creation of this project is motivated by this global and alarming issue. The main objective of the project is to create awareness of the importance to have a healthy lifestyle. Both partner countries aim at working together (as they have already started doing so for the past six months) through regular exchanges and virtual meetings via the twinspace that will be especially created for the project and through physical meetings during the planned mobilities. Through this project, we also aim at developing our students's motivation because a loss of motivation and involvement in school activtities can lead to early school leaving and as aforementioned early school leaving leads, in its turn, to unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. So this is one important issue to tackle. The pupils's self-esteem, curiosity, confidence, decisiveness, tolerance and open-mindedness will also be impacted by their participation in the project. Another of our aims is to develop our pupils as European citizens and engage learning about other cultures and lifestyles. It is important to encourage their curiosity, their openness to other cultures and nationalities and their propension to mobility. This will be done through regular web conversations, activities planned throughout the project and physical meetings. We are also building this partnership with a view to developing our students' basic and transferable skills, use of a foreign language and use of ICT. This will be developed through completing tasks and communicating with each other via IT tools. There are numerous objectives for our students but there are also many objectives for the staff and the teachers involved in the project. Indeed we aim at making our teaching methods more innovative and more attractive than regular usual teaching methods. The reputation and standing of our schools will also be impacted by such a project. The topic of our project is a global concern and is totally in line with "Europe 2020 Strategy: for a Healthier EU". Our project "A healhy mind in a healthy body" covers various fields such as Food, Sport, Health and Prevention.In order to reach the objectives aforementioned, a wide range of activities is planned. These activities will include the creation and the election of a logo to illustrate and promote our project, video presentation of the pupils and of each respective school and country, the creation of a healthy cookery book, the creation of posters and shooting of videos to promote and advertise a healthy lifestyle, the presentation of different sports, physical activities through the organisation of "Home Games" and "Junior Olympic Games in order for the pupils to get acquainted with sports and physical activities from their counterparts's country and the shooting of a video debunking stereotypes - stereotypes about boys and girls and stereotypes about different European nationalities. All of the results of these activities will be uploaded on the twinspace and on the project-related website. To prepare, organize and implement all these activities, a strong development of collaborative activities is planned at an European level and at a local level between pupils and teachers. Moreover the planned activities in the project will be totally in line with the pupils's curriculum so all the students will be involved in the activities - although not all of them will take part in the mobilities - as a consequence, the project and its objectives will become an integral part of the pupils's school life for two years. Furthermore, the pupils will receive lessons and attend classes to enable them to do the different activities successfully.Finally, the mobilities will enable the real development of team spirit. The mobilities will also enable the pupils to re-use and transfer the previously acquired skills in the actvities to be done together - France & Wales. Thanks to all the project activities, we hope to contribute to the achievement of the EU2020 objectives especially concerning its priorities in terms of education.
The "A healthy mind in a healthy body" KA2 project included 2 partners from 2 different countries (France: Collège de Wassigny and United Kingdom: Ysgol Gyfun Ystalyfera in Swnasea, Wales). This project aimed at raising awareness among teenagers about the importance of leading a healthy and balanced lifestyle by improving the quality of one's diet and by promoting the importance of practising a regular physical activity. As such, our project dealt with the subject of Health which is in line with the EU Health strategy "Together for Health", supporting, in turn, the "Europe2020 Strategy". Our desire to build and work on a project tackling the isssue of "Health and Sport" stemmed from the observation that adolescents's lifestyles tend to be less and less healthy. As we explained in the application form, many surveys illustrate this fact. We are not going into details as these examples are mentioned in the application form (cf the mention of the surveys led by the Eurobarometer on Sport and Physical Activity (Brussels, March 2014), the OECD and the programmes created to foster healthier lifestyles such as "EPODE" and "Change4Life"). The objectives of our project were numerous and varied. These objectives are mentioned in page 10/40 of the application form. They are not listed again here due to a lack of space. Thanks to the activities that will be mentioned more in depth a bit further down, we managed to reach the objectives aforementioned. The monthly (for the first year of the project) and the termly (for the second year of the project) planned activities helped increase the pupils's motivation, ambition, self-confidence and open-mindedness. They realized the opportunity they had to be part of such a project. They wanted to be deserving of such an opportunity. Therefore, they showed motivation and commitment in each stage and each activity of the project. The activities tackling the issue of Health and Sport helped the students grasp the importance of leading and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It also helped them improve their physical condition and enabled them to make wiser and more sensible nutritional choices. The "short-term exchange of pupils" planned during the partnership helped the pupils grasp the importance and the great opportunity of being mobile and enabled them to understand the diversity of European cultures. Exchanging with our foreign counterparts acquainted us with other teaching and learning methods. Initially, on the French side, 38 pupils were supposed to take part in the project. We decided to include all the voluntary pupils. During the two years of the project, the students involved in this project were in Year 9 and in Year 10. This partnership included about 60 pupils. This large number is justified by the fact that the activities and the project were inscribed in the curriculum of the pupils. So, the activities were all done during classes. Regarding the "short-term exchange of groups of pupils", the large amount of money granted allowed us to include more than 38 pupils. Therefore when going to Ysgol Gyfun Ystalyfera, 48 pupils were part of the exchange and when the Welsh partners came to France, all the Year 10 pupils - i.e. 60 pupils - welcomed their partners. The majority of the French pupils come from the lower socioprofessional categories. They have to deal with social hardships such as unemployment, poverty, split and foster families. Therefore, being part of such a project was and is a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity for most of them. The impact on the students and on the pedagogical teams is quite significant. The impact and the benefits can be measured in the short term, in the middle term and in the long term. In the short term, pupils realized what they were doing and the great opportunity they had to be part of this project. It developed their open-mindedness, their motivation and their commitment. It also helped them being more confident when realizing they were able to do the tasks asked of them and they were able to exchange and communicate with their partners. It also developed their status as European citizens. In the middle term, taking part in this project and having the opportunity to meet their partners in their home country made them want to be more mobile and to travel more, especially that most of the pupils never had the opportunity to leave their home country before. They showed their willingness to be part of a similar project in the future. Maybe they will have this opportunity again in high school. Regarding the pedagogical teams, we benefited from it by discovering and testing new pedagogical methods and IT tools which will be re-used in the near future.