The project “Towards empowerment and sustainability of young people “ is a transnational project for students in 3 public schools of secondary education in Iceland, Italy and Spain. The main aim of the project is to discover ways of empowerment of young people and find ways of sustainability for them for the future. Around 90 young students will be involved in the project. They are students at the 3 different schools – from age 15-18. The school systems of the participating schools are very different and go from very flexible in Iceland to rigid in Italy and Spain, placed in very different cultural context in Europe with very different values and traditions. Their possibilities are influenced by the isolated and rural environment they live in, struggling finding ways of sustaining themselves, specially in Italy and Spain where young people are facing a future with high rates of unemployment. In the project disabled students will participate on equal level with ohter students. The focus of the project will be to pull forward the strengths and skills in the three different student groups, making an advantage of the characteristics of the school systems as well as the natural environments and the society where they live. During the entire project various types of activities related to ecological tourism, arts, sports and outdoor activities implementing ICT will be developed and carried out by the participants. The methods and goals of the project the priorities of the European Commission in Education such as "Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training" and " Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training" During the project a learning community for the project will be created where the participants engage, share, build knowledge and collaborate to build sustainable ideas for how to build a future for young people. By coming together, learning in different environments and carrying out different activities the participants will learn to estimate the importance of sharing and collaboration, to adjust and to listen to each other and evaluate without being offended. Through the project a range of various business proposals with sustainable activities and ideas will be set forward. The participants will acquire acknowledge in how to investigate supply and demand on the market, needs and possibilities and come up with new job creating activities for their own environments. They will learn to work applying creativity and innovation and they will undergo an active learning process of being entrepeneurs. It will create a reason for young people to stay in their surroundings, commit them to education and give them possibilities to create jobs and be self-sufficient. Hopefully the results will reach out to other young people that will get inspired of the experiences.
The project “Towards empowerment and sustainability of young people “ is a transnational project focused on Tourism and entrepreneurship for students in 3 public schools of secondary education in Iceland ( Menntaskólinn á Tröllaskaga in Ólafsfjörður) , Italy ( IIES Patini Liberatore in Castel di Sangro) and Spain (IES Tías in Lanzarote). The main aim of the project was to discover ways of empowerment of young people and find ways of sustainability for them for the future. Around 75 students were be involved in the project and 10 teachers were involved from three different schools, the students from age 15-18. The school systems of the participating schools are very different and go from very flexible in Iceland to rigid in Italy and Spain, placed in very different cultural context in Europe with very different values and traditions. Their possibilities are influenced by the isolated and rural environment they live in, struggling finding ways of sustaining themselves, specially in Italy and Spain where young people are facing a future with high rates of unemployment. In the project disabled students will participate on equal level with other students. The main focus of the project was to pull forward the strengths and skills in the three different student groups, making an advantage of the characteristics of the school systems as well as the natural environments and the society where they live. During the entire project various types of activities related to ecological tourism, arts, sports and outdoor activities implementing ICT were developed and carried out by the participants. The methods and goals of the project were focused on the priorities of the European Commission in Education such as "Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training" and " Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training" . Another important goal that was reached was that of being inclusive, by that is meant that students with special needs and or emotional, social and economical disadvantages participated in the project. By participating in the project the were empowered as individuals and came out as enthusiastic and willing to participate in more projects. During the project the participants communicated on Social media ( Facebook, Whatsapp and other). They engaged, shared and builded knowledge and collaborated to build sustainable ideas for how to build a future for young people. By coming together during the mobilities, staying in host families, learning in different environments and carrying out different engaging and challenging activities the participants learned to estimate the importance of sharing and collaborating, they learned to adjust to different points of view of cultural en individual type. They shared experiences and ideas and learned to listen to each other and evaluate without being offended and understanding that they could actually learn from other fellow students. Through the project a range of various business proposals with sustainable activities and ideas was developed and at the end each in each school they selected one idea to develop. The participants acquired acknowledge in how to investigate supply and demand on the market, needs and possibilities and came up ideas of new jobs by creating activities for their own environments. They learned working while applying creativity and innovation. At the same time they went through an active learning process of being entrepreneurs. They also learned to see how they could learn from others. Another important goal was that through staying with host families it opened their eyes and ears to the fact that they were very much similar to their hosts, that many things were alike and yet a lot other were different. It became no so big a barrier as they thought in the beginning. The same happened to the host families themselves, they are much eager to open up their homes to students from other countries. The project motivated the participants to get involved and participate in new projects. The experience added an important value to their understanding of "the others" . It made them proud of themselves and empowered them, they saw their surroundings in a different light and will hopefully commit them to further education and nurtured the possibilities to create jobs and being self-sufficient. The dissimmination a of the project and its results will hopefully inspire others in the local communities to create projects and participate themselves.