‘Words Over Walls. The Value of Experience’, henceforth referred to by the acronym WOW, is an intergenerational project aimed to promote attitudes of tolerance and understanding towards migrants and migratory processes through the participation of senior citizens as informants in the school activities. The first stage of this two-year project includes the collaboration with external institutions (e.g., Afundación, Ellinkulma, Félag eldri borgara í Reykjavík og nágrenni) for the selection of the elderly collaborators, all of them persons who in the past lived migratory experiences. These former migrants will work collaboratively with the students in sessions specifically organized in school hours. The elders' account of their past migratory experiences is expected to serve as a resource for motivating the students' research on their own families' past. On a second stage, a collaborative writing experience will be organized and implemented among the students from the partner schools. With the use of wikis and digital platforms, pairs of students, one from each country, will write fictional stories based on the migratory experiences of the elders. These fictional stories will be started online, using digital platforms, and followed up face-to-face druing the exchanges. Towards the end of the project, a booklet gathering both collaborative writings and real experiences will be edited and published by the schools with the help of stakeholders. This booklet, which will also be digitally available on the net, will serve as tangible deliverable for dissemination. Transnational meetings will especially include collaborative writing workshops for students, exchange of good practice and teacher seminars on migrant inclusion, the educational value of life stories and intergenerational education. Organizers expect a significant raise in visible attitudes of tolerance and understanding, a decrease of conflictive situations inside schools, an improvement in the active learning of foreign languages and a new boost in the European dimension of education in the partner schools. Another aim will be the sustainability of the experience -or of substantial parts of it-, and its replication in other educational institutions. 72 students aged 13-18 (24 from each country) will directly take part in every stage of the project. A much greater number will partially benefit from some of its activities (e.g., the elderly informants’ presence at schools). Participation of students with special needs will be especifically programmed. The partner schools have experience in intergenerational education, collaborative writing techniques, usage of digital platforms, stakeholder collaboration and European programmes. Elderly people foundations, university departments, municipalities and other social services at a local and regional level have assured their participation in this project as external supporters.
The first objective of the association was to provide the students with a complete and documented insight of the migration phenomenon. The historical moment demanded it and still demands it: attitudes of xenophobia, contempt, or lack of solidarity with people who are forced to leave their country and seek refuge in the northern Mediterranean abound in the continent and are based mainly on ignorance. Easy discourses, which we all know well, are often generated to confront complex problems. The education system must react to such a scenario. One way to approach the migration phenomenon was to contact older people (neighbors, relatives) who had been migrants in other countries. This group is numerous, as we know, in Galicia, significant in Iceland and endowed with very special characteristics in the region of North Karelia where the Finnish associates are located. It has been possible for these people to pour their knowledge and their vital experience in educational institutions, to open their minds and broaden the vital horizon of our students. The main idea is that we have also been emigrants: we have sought life in places where they have received us well and in places where they have not. Sometimes we have even entered countries illegally in search of a new life. The protagonists of these events are at our fingertips and we have put them in contact with the students. But the social consideration of the migratory phenomenon depends on the culture and history of each country. In this international project, and based on the same principles, we have gathered three countries with different histories and sensitivities around migration. That difference, which has been reflected in the work and research of the project, has enriched us all. It is interesting to note that each country has contributed with different approaches to the project, from emigration for economic and political reasons in Galicia to the existence of refugee migrants from World War II in Karelia, to the special sensitivity towards immigrant people developed by the Icelandic partner, as the other side of the own migration phenomenon we study. All these complementary visions have enriched the project. In summary, the phases of the project were the following: 1. Contact with former emigrant persons. 2. Preparation of a research work, in English and presented at Power Point, about the lives of these people. 3. Presentation of the works to the group of participating students from the different countries. 4. Collaborative writing. Writing, in pairs, of a fiction story in English, related to the topic of the project. 5. Presentation of the story to the group of students. According to the objectives of the project, the concrete activities organized by each educational center have been very varied and have benefited an important number of students: • Organization of meetings with elderly people who have been migrants, both within educational institutions and in places outside them. • Meetings with refugees and asylum seekers. • Organization of several dynamic activities on the topic of emigration: Podcast competitions on migration research, radio interviews with older people with a past as migrants. • Several school visits with the participation of a large number of students to study the historical phenomenon of emigration in different countries. • Musical activities that affect cultural miscegenation derived from migratory phenomena. At the same time, mobility activities have been used for the organization of training sessions and exchange of good practices between teachers of the various centers and visiting teachers in each activity. A special effort has been made to ensure the impact and sustainability of the project. Dissemination activities continue to develop once the official period of validity of the project is over. The changes made in each educational center, mostly related to the participation of people and external entities and with the collaboration of a greater number of teachers in European activities, are being maintained.