The European Commission has adopted new initiatives to improve key competences as well as the European dimension of education in order to reduce socio-economic inequalities and also to harness the potential of education to foster social cohesion and a sense of belonging in the Press Release on 17th January 2018. To do so, we have to build on our common values and make sure that education enables the students to overcome their obstacles they face at schools, respect the teaching profession, experiencing their European identity in all its diversity and learning more about themselves as well as other European countries. In the light of these new measures, our European project has been designed in order to inform and encourage young people about our common values, natural beauties, school activities, to support their social and personal development, to support the schools to tackle ESL, to strengthen the profile of teaching professions and address underachievement in the basic skills of education through more effective, innovative teaching methods and to offer the teachers a good opportunity to discuss social and educational issues of ongoing curriculum by implementing some tools. The partnership consists of the secondary schools from Turkey, Spain, Lithuania, Italy, France and Czech Republic as the coordinator. The students are 15-18 years old. All partners two of whom take part in such projects for the first time have got similar problems and believe in the philosophy stating that " When a child develops, the school will develop and then the whole country will develop." As it is known, one of the problems of Europe in education is ESL and inadequacies in teaching. Some students are forced to leave school due to some factors such as school environment, unattractive social activities, having some financial and family problems, violence and bullying. The project objectives are to develop the participants’ general and specific competences in order to widen their perspectives from local to the European sphere, to reduce the ESL, to collaborative partnerships, to improve EU strategies in social inclusion and equal opportunities. The project introduces different techniques to teachers and give opportunities to practise different education systems in place to develop themselves since the professional sharing among teachers reduced excessively and teaching profession lost its prestige. The project offers a well defined controllable way for partner schools to take social issues from the curriculum and apply them into the running of the school. This process helps students recognize the importance of social issues and take them more seriously in their lives. The tasks consist on dealing with content knowledge and problem-solving tasks, thinking skills, such as analysing, evaluation or hypothesizing with the help of methods such as meetings, workshops, discussions, sharing of educational materials and experiences, informal activities, excursions, competitions, role-plays, surveys, seminers, presentations, creating newsletters and DVDs and eTwinning network activities. Preparatory sessions before mobilities to provide information about tasks, insurance, safety, partners’ culture, context, etc., and disseminating and transference sessions after mobility will also be conducted. As a result, participants will become familiarised with the different education systems and cultures in Europe. Watching and discussing the movies on education, the participants will get the opportunity to see the deficiencies in the education systems and how to overcome them. This will further help in the development of intercultural competences to cater for a more tolerant and mature society as it will eliminate geographical and social barriers. Through the activities on Intercultural Learning, similarities and differences in education in partners, gender issues, discrimination, human rights, multilingualism, natural disasters and protecting environment, entrepreneurship, writing a CV, ESL, violence and bullying, lack of literacy, effective communication and European Citizenship, participants will work together in a multicultural environment and in mutual understanding by meeting at a common ground. They will be aware of the natural disasters and how to protect the environment by Natural Disaster activities and also introduce their local dishes by National Quisine Days. In these activities, participants improve self-confidence and start to say "I can also do". Through the project gardens, the impact will be produced in a long-term perspective. The project will be an opportunity to create more engaging learning environment in order to reduce ESL, to develop the creativities of students, to ensure them to take initiatives and encourage the innovation. The project will also provide the teachers go beyond their own stereotypes in the fields of their trainings and turn to new horizons so that they could educate better generations.
The project lasted for two years and was attended by 6 partner countries. There were five LTT activities in two years, and work that was done outside of these meetings. Unfortunately, due to the global coronavirus pandemic situation, on agreement with the partners, the last meeting was held online. Nevertheless, all project goals and outputs were met. The project focused primarily on supporting high school students aged 15-18, reducing their ESL (early school leaving) rate, increasing competencies that would accompany them throughout their studies and working life and also introduce them to the issue of motivation, working in an international team, effective communication, expression of opinions and attitudes, and multilingualism. Pupils also met and worked on concepts such as racism, gender issues and discrimination during the project. The pupils learned to present their work confidently. They learned to understand individual cultures from their historical roots until now. They also learned to analyse a given problem, evaluate it correctly and find the most appropriate solution. They learned all this mainly thanks to the carrying out tasks (presentations, videos, surveys, etc.), which were based on the project and which they had to introduce and present at each meeting. The project also supported teachers and other staff at the school. Especially in further education, learning about new, different cultures and encouraging cooperation at the international level. The project will have long-term benefits for pupils, their parents, and teachers, as well as for other participants - cities, municipal leaders, neighbouring schools, local media, and the public. In each of them, it left an awareness of the project implementation at the international level and was an example of good practice for potential new participants in the Erasmus+ project.