According to the World Health Organization, between 60 and 72 percent of teenagers do not accomplish the physical activity necessary to obtain health benefits. In many cases, this sedentary lifestyle presents in our students together with an inadequate diet. However, it is at this point in life that the foundations of a good quality of life in adulthood and old age are established. Poor nutrition is the cause of many physical and mental illnesses among our students. It is therefore necessary to create a social awareness about a balanced diet and physical activity and turn this principles into the basic pillars to stablish the formation of our citizens. After a survey conducted through Google Forms in the schools that form this association we have noticed that between 65 and 78 percent of our students do not perform enough physical activity weekly, have a proper food culture, spend an excessive number of hours in front of the television, game consoles or glued to the screens of the mobile phones, being, in this way in serious risk to suffer the consequences of obesity, diabetes, alimentary disorders or of other serious diseases. That is why we have decided to start a new collaborative project called “European Olympics” aimed at making our students start in the regular practice of sport, to value a healthy way of living and concern of their diet. We have also considered including this awareness in the principles surrounding the Olympic Games by promoting solidarity, team collaboration, healthy competitiveness and fair play. It is our goal to involve our students in the practice of indoor and outdoor sports. That is why we will take advantage of the geographical conditions of each of the countries included in this association. We will carry out sporting activities related to water in Portugal and Spain and related to the mountain in Bulgaria and Slovenia. In all the countries we will carry out hiking routes through typical places of the locality which will allow us to approach an environmental conscience based on the sustainability and ecology in our students and will also allow them to evaluate the impact that the human being has had on the fauna and the flora of the different countries. Transnational learning activities will allow our students to compare different lifestyles, different ways of eating and sports practices to which they are not accustomed. It is also our goal to use English for communicative purposes and to promote European identity. We won´t forget the integration of students in economic or cultural disadvantage in our project. These are all values contained in the Olympic principles and also the values we want our students to learn. To achieve these objectives, a total of 72 students aged between 14 and 16 years of our schools will visit all partner country in various exchanges with students from other countries. We will also held three transnational meetings for teachers to Spain, Portugal and Slovenia. Throughout the Project we will conduct three surveys of our students and their families related to the practice of sport and food. In addition, we will prepare of an Erasmus Wall in all partners schools, we will design a logo of the project and during the transnational learning activities we will organize sports activities and hiking routes and each country will perform its own design of medals. We will create an e-Twinning project using Twin Space as a platform for participants to work on the project. We will also create Blog of the project in which all project information, photographs, comments, etc. will be available. It will also provide a forum for students and teachers involved in the project. Besides our project also envisages that over the two years of collaboration four different manuals are going to be developed by students, teachers and other school-related organizations in the participating schools:-A Decalogue of “Olympic Behaviour” in Portugal, A guidebook of “Sport and Healthily Living" in Bulgaria, a “Mountain Hiking for Young Adventurers Guide” in Slovenia and a “Healthy Food Manual for Young Athletes” in Spain. Apart from the benefits of the different school exchanges we believe that our project will be spread in the respective school communities and local organizations institutions, with whom we will collaborate from the beginning. The impact derived from the implementation of the actions that we are to perform will be measured objectively as we aim to make an initial assessment of the sports practices, lifestyle and nutrition of our students at the beginning of the program. An evaluation will be conducted at the end of our project. It is our goal the in the long-term that our students come to appreciate the benefits of a healthy diet and regular sport and assume as own one of the motto of our project: ” Training together and playing together is quick path to friendship and understanding”.
Being worried about the growing sedentary lifestyle, lack of sports, abuse of new technologies, poor diet and rising obesity rates in many of our students, we decided to design a new collaborative project that directly addressed this issue and which we called "European Olympics". Our project stood around four main principles: -Sport -Healthy Life -Sharing of Olympic values -Cultural Exchange Through these four educational values we aimed at making our students start in the regular practice of sport, value fair play, teamwork and solidarity. We intended to further encourage the habits of healthy diet and conservation of the environment in them. It was also our goal to use English for communicative purposes and to promote European identity. These are all values contained in the Olympic principles and also the values we wanted our students to learn. To achieve these objectives, a total of 76 students and 27 teachers of our schools visited all partner countries in Transnational Learning Activities. Different sports activities were conducted with different themes according to the facilities available in each country during these visits. Sports activities related to water were held in Spain, around hiking and mountains in Bulgaria, around snow in Slovenia and around sea in Portugal. We also carried out different activities related to the topics of our project in our respective schools, ensuring this way that our project would have an impact in all the school communities. We also held three Transnational Meetings for teachers, in Spain, Portugal (at the same time that the Transnational Learning Activity) and a final one in Slovenia. Besides, our project also envisaged that over the two years of collaboration four different guides were going to be developed by students, teachers and other school-related organizations in the participating schools: -A guide of “Olympic Behaviour” in Portugal -A guide of “Sport and Healthily Living" in Bulgaria -A guide of “Mountain Hiking for Young Adventurers” in Slovenia. -A guide of “Healthy Food for Young Athletes” in Spain. These guides as well as many other activities carried out in each school (i.e. workshops, lectures by experts, different sport activities) together with all the information about the Transnational Learning Activities and the Transnational Meetings have been adequately disseminated through a web page (https://euolympics.wixsite.com/erasmusplus), through the different blogs of the project created in each school, through My Space in e-twinning and through Facebook (European Olympics). Apart from the benefits of the different school exchanges, we believe that our project has spread in the respective school communities and in local organizations institutions, with whom we have been collaborating from the beginning. The impact derived from the implementation of the actions we have performed have been measured objectively by an initial and final assessment of the sports practices, lifestyle and nutrition of our students. The results of this assessment as well as the meetings evaluation results can be found on the blogs and on the web page. It has been our goal that our students come to appreciate the benefits of a healthy diet and regular sport and assume the motto of our project as their own:” Training together and playing together is quick path to friendship and understanding”.