We prepared our project according to 2020 strategy of European Commission entitled “EARLY SCHOOL LEAVING”.Early school leaving is linked to unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. There are many reasons why some young people give up education and training too soon: personal or family problems, learning difficulties or a fragile socio-economic situation. The way the education system is set up and the environment in individual schools are also important reasons for the issue.Europe's future depends largely on its young people. Through its Europe 2020 strategy, the European Union aims to support young people better and to enable them to fully develop their talents for their own as well as for their economy's and society's benefit. One of the headline targets agreed by the European Council is to reduce the share of early school leavers to less than 10% and to ensure that at least 40% of the younger generation has a tertiary qualification or equivalent. Improving the educational achievement of young people addresses both the aims for 'smart growth' by improving skills levels and for 'inclusive growth' by tackling one of the major risk factors for unemployment and poverty. (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ EN/TXT/HTML/?uri =CELEX:52011DC0018& from= EN)As the partners of this project, Since the activity field of all the partners is education, culture and sports and the target groups of the institutions are teenagers, we took our responsibilities as the ones who can provide beneficial supports for the future of EU.We framed out our project to improve our students’, teenagers 'talents as well as qualification, educational achievements and basic skills level. We will support inclusive growth of our students by our project activities.The first step of the project is searching the rates of early school leaving at schools. So our project will be one step ahead in terms of affecting level. Even though there are five partners in the project, with sub-partners the project will be applied more than 5 schools.Students at risk of early school leaving will be the main actors in the project. Moreover, we will also find out the ones who have already dropped out and let them complete their education.We set up teams in every institution including teachers, Psychological Counselors, PE teachers, Arts teachers, Drama teachers, ICT teachers, Retired teachers, Administrative staff, PTA members and Music teachers. These teams will instruct all the activities. Project activities will be applied with the aim of improving our beneficiaries’ basic skills, ICT skills, social skills, language skills and entrepreneur skills. We want our teenage participants to get to know the feeling of success and to make them aware of being useful. It is also our aim to increase their self-confidence, self-esteem and individual talents. We believe that our project will provide them the taste of success and hopes for future.Our activities are after school activities. There are five major types of activities- sports, musical, theatrical, artistic and entrepreneurship/ voluntary. (see implementation sections for the activities and work programme)OBJECTIVES:1. to improve our students’/ teenager’s talents, qualification, educational achievements and basic skills level.2. to prevent students from school drop out and inequality3. to encourage learning of modern foreign languages4. to improve pupil`s sports and social skills5. to support students' school and life successNUMBER AND PROFILE OF THE PARTICIPANTSTeenagers: 400 active+ 400 indirect : 800Teachers: 50 direct + 50 indirect : 100Members of NGOs: 50 direct + 70 indirect: 120Administrative staff: 20 direct + 20 indirect: 40Parents: 300 direct + 300 indirect: 600Local community : 300 Total number of beneficiaries : 1960RESULTS AND IMPACTSThrough our project the five partners intend to create both short-term and long-term tangible and intangible results and to achieve the biggest possible impact to future projects and policy processes such as leading students to overcome lack of self-esteem, setting up the project website in order to provide a continuous access to the general information of the project activities, progress and results, writing newspaper reports and creating on-site panels or leaflets to inform non-specialist audience about the project background and main results, communication, and cognitive skills of students, at risk as well as cultivating effective partnerships between trainers, educators, and community organizations so as to amplify our collective impact on the students.
CONTEXT/BACKGROUND: Today's world map shows us an increasing intermingling of various cultures that have to or want to live together. It is why we believe that the sooner we act, the better chance we will stand to prevent such conflicts from breaking out. The reason why we chose to make this a priority of our project is the fact that this entire phenomenon is also visible from early stages of life, at ages when children should try to see the beauty of life, should learn acceptance and tolerance and should be free from prejudices. All the school involved have immigrant students and are vocational school facing with the unimployement problems wich afflicts each of the areas of the project partners. OBJECTIVES: The overall purpose of the project is to prevent early school leaving objectives we have established are meant as steps that need to be undertaken in order to attain the purpose: 1. to improve our student's talents, qualification, educational achievement and basic skills level. 2. to prevent students from school dropout and inequality 3. to improve students' sport and social skills 4. to encourage the learning of different languages and cultures from the European cultural backgrounds and develop their social and communication skills 5. to encourage the learning of different languages and cultures from the European space. 6. to encourage individual talents. 7. to support students'school and life success. NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANT: 400 students in the 5 schools with ages ranging from 13-17 will benefit indirectly. Out of these, 87 students have participated in the short-term exchanges. 30 of them are at risk of social exclusion, facing economic difficulties or have behaviour problems. The selection happened before each meeting (8 students/partner/meeting) according to a previously established methodology. One criterion in the selection of the team has been to have a wide variety of cultures and minorities.200 teachers involved directly and indirectly. The project team in each school comprised at least 1 English teacher, 1 Arts teacher, 1 Music teacher and 1 PE teacher. Their work was to coordinate and was supervised by the contact person and the legal representative of each institution. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES & METHODOLOGY TO BE USED- Project management (ongoing): Design and implementation of methodologies to be applied - selection of participants, communication, reporting; Financial management and acquisitions; Risk management and control; Evaluation of activities and results. - Transnational Meetings: M1-IT The role of teachers in combating school leaving. - Developing a programme M2-IT Presentation of data referring to school leaving issues at local levels by each school. Current local measures to combat and prevent dropout. - LTTAs: C1 GR - Music activities, C2 PT- Art activities, C3 HU - sport activities, C4 IT - theatre activities - Dissemination of project results and activities (ongoing): Creation of website and updates; Creation of e-twinning space; Design of materials - brochures, CDs, DVDs, flyers, posters; Dissemination meetings; Elaboration of sustainability plan. RESULTS AND IMPACT aware of the phenomenon and implications -the cases of school dropout are reduced- the schools became part of a network and can assist each student in dealing with conscious choices and such choices are promoted among participants and indirect beneficiaries. LONG-TERM BENEFITS: the participation to European projects was particularly appreciated by students who more easily chose our school and ask to be involved in.