A poem by joana Raspall says: If you would have been born in another country, you would be white, or black… Another country away from home, and you’d say “yes” in another language. You would have been raised differently. Maybe better, maybe worse. You could have been luckier or not… You would have different friends and different games; you would dress rags or silk, leather shoes or nothing at all, maybe you would be naked in the rainforest. You would read tales and poems or not having books nor know how to read. You could eat the sweetest candy or just a stale loaf of bread. You would… you would… If we all search our unique history we may find out that our forefathers would be refugees or immigrants as well and that the place we consider as our homeland may be far away from the place that we live now. The history repeats itself and if we haven’t faced situations like that we may have to face them in future time. That’s why it’s important to help people who flee their countries running away from pain, poverty and misery. If you were born in their countries, their sadness could be yours… During the specific project students from Sweden, Finland, Netherlands Greece and Spain are to “travel” to their own history (using alternatively and creative tools and techniques of teaching approaches and some of the educational material of UNHCR) in order to find out similarities and differences with the migration issues of nowadays, forge values of volunteering and community service - empathy for refugees and immigrants - the sense of belonging to a European community. Finally it is that is designed to encourage creativity, innovation, collaboration, strategy skills, presentation skills of students and teachers, to give priority to children with a migrant background or from ethnic minorities, to enhance digital competences to exploit the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to defeat the lack of students and teachers’ digital literacy and skills, reinforces to students and teachers the need of developing their foreign language skills and to encourage the creativity and innovation to students and teachers.
The project “On the Road of Exile” had as main objective the sensitization of all the participants towards the historical and current migratory movements, the improvement of English language competence and digital competence. Through different activities, the participants have acquired greater knowledge and awareness about the realities that accompany and derive from this migratory phenomenon, its history and its impact on today's societies. Thanks to collaborative activities at a European level and to mobilities, students and teachers have improved their English language skills. The nature of most of the activities has enhanced the improvement of the digital skills of the educational community. In the project, more than 2000 students have benefited directly or indirectly from its realization and among them, about 30 students from each school have had the possibility of participating in the mobilities. A big part of the teachers of the partner schools have been able to participate directly or indirectly in the activities and/or mobilities. In the case of families, we have seen the number of proposals to collaborate in both sending and receiving mobility students grow. We can say that it has been a success for the schools in terms of the participation of the educational communities in it. The project started with the study of migratory movements themselves to make students aware that these have historically occurred in Europe and worldwide. We have used different techniques to approach the phenomenon, among which collaborative writing, collaborative brainstorming, role-play and drama have stood out. It is worth highlighting the role of Emotional Education activities, which have been one of the critical tools in achieving one of our main objectives: to improve the empathy of the educational community especially towards migration (although it has also helped positively in many other aspects). Other activities of the project have been: collaboration with NGOs to help refugees and charity events in collaboration with these associations. Among the most outstanding results, especially for the primary schools of the project, there has been a substantial improvement in English language skills that have been seen in the improvement of the results of the school and state examinations. There has also been an increase in digital skills, especially in the independence of students when using new apps to create content and in the management of the proposed platforms. The percentage of students and families more comprehensive with the migration phenomenon has been exponentially increased (in some cases by up to 40% more) and we believe that collaborative activities with NGOs have been the key. Once completed, the schools have incorporated into their educational projects the realization of emotional education activities such as mentoring programming and charity events as part of their extra activities in collaboration with families. In some cases, the methodologies used in the project have also been incorporated into practice. The project has not only opened the door to new future collaborations between the partners (eTwining, Erasmus +) but it has also made the centers see the importance of introducing emotional education in their classrooms in order to not only increase the empathy of the community education towards migratory movements, but also its usefulness to work in various fields, including knowing better and managing oneself emotions, controlling impulses, recognizing the emotions of others and establishing healthier relationships, along with motivating oneself.