Children's social and emotional well - being, which can be defined as the presence of a culture, ethos and environment that promotes dynamic, optimal development and flourishing for all in the school community, does not only affect the phyical health of the children of E.U, today and in the future as adults but in parallel it is a decisive factor of their academic success. One of the most important settings for the promotion of pupils' well-being is the European school, which role is to promote the moral, spiritual, social and personal development of students. Schools are also asked to provide a safe and supportive environment for building life skills and resilience. Life skills are a set of basic skills that enable a person to effectively manage the challenges of daily life. They include critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, the ability to communicate and collaborate, along with personal and social responsibility and empathy. Educational experts stress that any attempt for the development of "Life skills" without a parallel highlighting of the underlying European values that consist the strong foundations of them cannot bring the expected results. Despite the above mentioned well acknowledged point of view, EU educational systems focus more on the academic achievements and let aside the aspect of well being. Therefore, a clear necessity for immediate action in order to promote pupils' well being by assisting them develop "Life Skills" and resilience competencies clearly arises. The educational institutions that form the partnership of project, responding to the above mentioned need, have elaborated an intervention that focuses to “School as a whole” and the main objective of which is to design, develop, apply, test and promote methods, processes and educational tools that will assist EU pupils to develop life skills for their social and emotional well being and resilience. The partnership, which consists of schools from Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Spain, countries with differentiated cultural, economical and educational backgrounds, in order to achieve the above mentioned objective has cooperatively designed a set of activities that includes intra-school mapping studies of Risk Factors that negatively affect pupils’ well-being, educational content development activities with its relevant teaching and learning materials and tools, structures to monitor the on going progress of the project impact on its beneficiaries of innovative character in the form of “Risk Factors Observatory” and tools to provide the opportunity for pupils to self-benchmark their life skills and resilience competences in the form of WEB 2.0 or ANDROID application. The partners have also scheduled the dissemination activities that will promote the project to selected target audiences and thus achieve the desired impact. Transnational learning activities, in the form of Short-Term Joint Staff Training Events, have also been designed to assist and support teaching staff at their effort to fulfill their task of teaching Life Skills in the context of EU values and develop resilience competencies to the pupils. These transnational actions will provide quality learning opportunities for the staff of the partner schools and provide a framework for them to develop innovative learning. The results, outcomes and final products of the project will be promoted to target audiences consisted by educators, educational councilors and heads of educational administration structures at local, regional and national / international level and certain policy messages that may arise by the implementation of the project will be communicated to policy makers at national and EU level.
Acknowledging that children's social and emotional well - being, which can be defined as the presence of a culture, ethos, and environment that promotes dynamic, optimal development and flourishing for all in the school community, does not only affect the health of the children of the E.U, but it is also a decisive factor of their academic success, the schools of the partnership decided to take action under the favorable framework of the ERASMUS+ E.U. Program. A review of the educational policies of the member states indicated that, although in all EU educational systems references related to pupils’ well-being are recorded, in practice, they seem to focus more on the academic achievements and disregard the aspect of well being, despite the scientific developments in pedagogy and positive psychology. Therefore, a clear need for action has arisen and set the main goal of the project – the promotion of pupils' well being, by assisting them to develop "Life Skills", and resilience competencies (basic qualities that enable a person to effectively manage the challenges of daily life, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, the ability to communicate and collaborate, along with personal and social responsibility and empathy) with a parallel highlighting of the underlying European values that consist the strong foundations of our common European Identity. The schools of the partnership, responding to the above mentioned need, cooperatively elaborated an intervention that focused to “School as a whole” and the main objective of which was to design, develop, apply, test and promote methods, processes and educational tools that can assist EU pupils to develop life skills in a framework that aligns with the main European Values, for their social and emotional well being and resilience. The partnership, which consisted of schools from Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Spain, countries with differentiated cultural, economic and educational backgrounds, cooperatively implemented a set of interrelated activities that led to significant outcomes in order to achieve the above-mentioned objective: i). A Common intra-school mapping study for the assessment of the status of pupils’ well-being and the identification of the main risk factors that negatively affect it. The activity revealed that pupils mainly construct their perception of their well-being in the social domain, overlooking aspects such as self-efficacy, academic improvement, and participation in school life. The key risk factors that have been identified are bullying, school stress, absenteeism, and social isolation. ii) Development of educational content with its relevant learning materials and teaching tools in many forms, from board games and puppetry scenario for the development of critical thinking and ethical decision making, anger management, emotional awareness to structured teaching packs for values teaching, like tolerance and respect, and from educational drama for the promotion of empathy and coping skills and resilience to cooperative games by the exploitation of arts for the improvement of social dynamics and school climate. iii) Supportive instruments, such as “Bullying Mediators” and “Risk Factors Observatory”, for conflict resolution and monitoring of the well-being in the schools. iv) Transnational learning activities, in the form of five (5) Short-Term Joint Staff Training Events provided unique opportunities for the staff of the schools to meet, obtain scientifically validated information, exchange opinions and experiences, participate in cooperative activities and develop knowledge and skills. v) Transnational Meetings that were organized in parallel with the Short-Term Joint Staff Training Events brought together school heads who met with different organizational models of schools, different school cultures, interacted in a multicultural environment and, in cooperation with the coordinators, monitored, evaluated and validated its processes, outcomes and results, widened their schools’ organizational networks and enriched their personal ones. The project and its outcomes were promoted to different target audiences during 6 dissemination events, that were organized during the period of the transnational activities. Those target groups consisted of parents and caregivers, educators and educational councilors, of educational administration structures at the local and regional levels. The project was also promoted in social media and by its WEB presence. The project reached more than 1200 pupils, 400 families, 200 teachers, and 5 local communities and delivered its key message: the recognition of well-being as a priority in European schools, by the development and support of programs for the development of life skills and resilience, brings multifaceted results psychological, emotional and social, to the pupils as individuals, their families, their communities and contribute equally to their prosperity.