On its 60-Year-Anniversary (at least when you consider the Treaty of Rome) a fundamental discontent runs through the EU, a disaffection that threatens the very existence of Europe on a political level, an unhappiness that facilitates the ongoing split of societies on a social level, the increasing economic inequality of people and an unrest about the current situation connected to refugees seeking for help in different parts of the world. These circumstances are accompanied by a steadily growing uncertainty and difficulty to obtain information about these issues for parts of the population. In our unfolding digital world it is more and more tricky to distinguish between fact and opinion, truth and falsehood. The complete (or at least growing) absence of empathy and understanding for “the other” on the most basic level is the central underlying problem or basis for all these topics. These will affect everyone of us and most important our children and young students (age of 11 to 16) who need to achieve an appropriate basis of knowledge and learning techniques and who are the main target of our project. This is the complex world our students are growing into. This is the complex situation students want to know and talk about. Most of them recognize that it will concern them in the near future. On the other hand, this is the complex situation a lot of students don't know anything about because they do not care. They may not have been socialized at home to address these matters, they are occupied with their personal, social or economic problems , their need for a "simple" answer is urgent. There is an obvious need to make our children involved, to offer answers and a way of asking questions to get these answers as early as possible by themselves. This is a lifelong learning process. These issues can only be solved transnationally in our globalized digital world. We think that it is a necessity and our main objective to strengthen the idea of a European citizenship (even a global citizenship in the future), to cultivate an identity based on empathy and understanding, to create a cultural awareness by fulfilling our obligation of being a part of constructing our European identity, to merge different identities without denying or giving up our own national heritage. The creation of a common European future essentially depends on how the different member countries of the European Union and countries, which would like to join, define and deal with the term “Europe” and if they are able to extend the relationships, as the European Union is more than an economical community of purpose. As a consequence our students have to acquire substantial professional skills and the ability to judge about several items in the area of social sciences, so that they can determine their local/regional/national identity and they have to understand that their own identity does not necessarily differ from others. Different workshops in different countries will be held that produces as results material in very different subjects like Music, Literature, Sports, History and Politics. This material will be published and shared with other schools where it can be used for regular classes to create the fundamental understanding of each other. They will get the distinct insight that our countries have more in common than they differ, that there is a basis that may lay the foundation to a community that is more interlinked than they thought. The project's dealings with migrants and refugees broaden the scope and enable them to think outside the box. Although we use eTwinning and construct a project web page students will create their own online-newspapers to publish their material and share them with the public audience. Regarding methodologies the construction and support of digital skills, the development of media literacy is necessary, hence our students should be able to use these skills as learning techniques and possibilities independently while and also after the project. Furthermore, they will learn how to procure information from different kinds of media. Children have access to so many different sources of information that they often see no necessity of learning about digital skills, so one has to find a new and motivating way to make them interested. The potential longer term benefits are obvious as Jean-Paul Junker as President of the European Commission in his white paper of the future of Europe wrote: "As we decide which way to go, we should remember that Europe has always been at its best when we are united, bold and confident that we can shape our future together." Let us follow this path and shape an transnational identity to reach this future.
The corona crisis just highlights the existing problems of the European Union and its member states. Reflexively, they try to make political decisions on a national level in order to stem the pandemic, what mainly results in engrossing self-interests. A coordinated and successful line of actions between the different members does not exist apart from a small number of exceptions. The suboptimal crisis management of populist governments at least shows us that working together in a globalized and digitalized world is irremissible. But we should not forget that joint action always finds its basis in joint understanding. As a pure trade association Europe and the EU remain an empty framework that has to be filled with life. We perceive our project as only a small component in creating a European awareness in students, teachers and parents. The construction of a European citizenship has to function as a metaphor for a European identity, which is based on empathy and mutual understanding and which includes respecting cultural differences enclosing national and regional identities and our cultural heritage on a national level. During the project our students gained fundamental competences in the areas of social sciences and the humanities while they tried to define their local/regional/national identities and compared them with those defined at our partner schools. They worked out similarities and differences with help of different forms of gaining information and knowledge like taking part in workshops, listening to presentations and visiting organisations outside school. The following examples should be mentioned as a selection out of many activities: On a political level: the visit to the regional parliament in Murcia in order to get to know the daily process of finding political decisions on a regional level, a workshop in Spain in order to examine and evaluate the possibilities for students to be part of official school councils; On a historical level: the visit to the ethnographic national museum in Tartu in order to get to know the Estonian culture especially its roots, the visit to the UN world heritage Corvey which is known as a starting point of extensive Christianisation in broad parts of Europe; On a literary level: the joint staging of national fairy tales and myths and their basic topoi and narratives; On a musical level: a workshop on traditional music instruments and classical composers and singing the European anthem; On an artificial level: the creation of traditional Christmas cards and the development of a project logo, which underlines our similarities; On a sport level: a comparison of our most popular traditional types of sport and the presentation of unknown traditional games which were played together and implemented in sports lessons as well. The decision to include the topic “migrants and refugees” into our project made it possible to broaden the scope beyond the European dimension. That this is in dire need can be seen in examples like the catastrophe of Moria and the following inactivity of the EU and most of its member states. It definitely will be a challenge to face this problem together without denying fundamental values like human rights. Presentations and workshops given by the Spanish department of Amnesty International and the visit to an SOS Children’s Village near Zagreb illustrated this need. The stay at church organisations in Paderborn, in order to have an insight into the topic of integration to some extent, had to be cancelled due to the corona crisis. Building up structured media literacy in the students (for example independent information procurement, dealing with media, verification of sources etc.) can only be an obligatory basis for the development of further learning techniques. In a world in which a lot of adults and students use social media as their primary source of information, the relevance of editorially supervised transmission of information decreases and one only acts via content-free captions, this basement can only be seen as being highly important. Especially those enemies of a common European identity make use of those means. One workshop in Voru examined the formation of, the motivation behind and the possibilities of unmasking fake news. In Vaala we learned how to use digital media in different situations in school in an appropriate way. Everybody in this project gained the main insight that our similarities are the basis for a European community, which is already woven together on an economical and cultural level. A change in the humans mentality on the other side will be an evolutionary process.