As the title implies, the aim of this project is first and foremost to enhance the civil competence of our students when confronted with the current affairs throughout the European Union. Each school will choose twenty participants aged 15-18. They will learn about the history and foundation of the EU, its development over the past decades and the current political situation it is facing. Apart from the beginnings of the Union, each school will focus on aspects that concern their own country and then present, discuss and reflect their results at the designated student exchanges. In this manner the students will not only acquire knowledge about the European Union on a wider scale, but also enjoy the opportunity of having a hands on experience with other EU citizens across Europe. As a result, they will gain a deeper understanding of the numerous advantages that the European Union provides for themselves as members and simultaneously become aware of issues that are impeding the concept and spirit of the EU. We will devise and create a common website for the project that is linked directly to our respective school websites. This will not only be used for uploading results and correspondence, but also to present the stages of our project to the school as well as the local community. All results will also be uploaded on eTwinning and continuously displayed in our Erasmus project corners at school. Articles will be written on diverse issues that concern our project and be published on school websites as well as transmitted to the local/regional press in each partner city. One of our main objectives will be to create a board game based on the concept of monopoly called “EuropEyes”, in which all questions will be based on knowledge about European issues. These questions will be devised and collected during each of the student exchanges and will refer to the issues of those respective meetings. The board game will be completed after the third student exchange and distributed at the fourth one. It can be used as additional learning material in subjects such as Politics, Social Studies or even Engish. Depending on the quality of our result as well as financial conditions, the game might also be distributed on a larger scale. Apart from the website and the board game, there will also be workshops and debates on European matters which will be open to the school community and the parents. We will also draw local attention to our project and objectives by staging a public flashmob during our student exchange in Portugal. Furthermore, the students will get the attention of a bigger local audience by preparing an exhibition for the annual "Europe Week" in 2018. All the aforementioned activities will facilitate raising an awareness of shared concepts and promote the capacity to act on related issues. The participation in this project will allow our schools and communities to promote a positive attitude both towards Europe, its roots and its traditions as well as towards the cultural aspects and legacy of our past. The project aims to produce young people who are more conscious about their role in society and in Europe. They will become more aware of differences and similarities between different European countries, of how being different can help to understand others better, and that while working together it may be just the differences that effectuate responsible, valuable and tolerant citizens for a stronger European Union.
The project was successfully carried out and completed with but few impediments. In general, the cooperation between the partners was harmonious and we supported each other well. Whether student or teacher, it was an enriching experience for everyone involved. Our primary aim of enhancing the civil competence of our students was realized not only through their hands on experiences while discovering the diversity and coexistence of various EU member countries, but also through the content of our work. The same context/background of our project applies that is mentioned in the "project summary at application time" above, hence there is no need to repeat it in this section. The participants were chosen after they had applied to partake in the project. The eligibility criteria was based on age, English fluency, motivation, reliability and good conduct. The acquisition of participants apparently went well with our partner schools, we as the coordinating school experienced some difficulties though. For one, the minimum amount of required students only even apllied for the project. Of these initial participants, several dropped out throughout the timespan of our project (but a few new students also joined the project later on). There were different reasons for this such as leaving school for vocational training, having to take other lessons parallel to out Erasmus time slot, eventual lack of motivation on account of the workload etc. In the end there were only five participants who partook in the whole project. Of those five, two had to leave four months before completing the project because they were involved with their "Abitur" exams. This in turn made it impossible to complete our before and after questionnaire, seeing that the data would have been rather insignificant. Apart from that impediment, everything else pretty much went as initially planned. Each school was able to accomodate the participants in host families and all of the scheduled activities took place. The flashmob was misaligned from Portugal to Germany on account of a misunderstanding, but all results and goals were reached nonetheless. The students devised a common website which was phenomenally administered by our Romanian partners. All of the Learning/Teaching/Training activities are documented there and can be accessed at www.online-faceproject.com. To put it briefly, the students learned and taught each other about the foundation and history of the EU, about the specific framework of their respective countries within the EU, about their rights and obligations as EU citizens as well as about the dangers the EU faces despite all of its advantages. Much of our common work is documented in a final outcome in the form of a magazine. Next to their scientific work, the students also had podium discussions with guest speakers from the European Parliament, visited a plenary session in the European Parliament, partook in creative workshops (paintings, T-shirt designs, debates) and even submitted some paintings to a European Art Exhibition in Portugal. Various reports and articles were released by the local press and the flashmob was held in the Mönckebergstraße, Hamburg's main downtown shopping area. The dissemination and impact of our work is considered to be effective and successful by our whole team. Most of our material has been uploaded in the Beneficiary's dashboard and is currently waiting for approval. A few files were unfortunately too big to be uploaded,one of which can be viewed on our website though. Concerning long-term benefits, many of our students found good friends and acquired substantial knowledge about the EU that will undoubtedly benefit them and enable an active participation in current or future social/political happenings. This became apparent in our final evaluation of the project with the students during our last Learning/Teaching/Training activity in Hamburg.