Our project focuses on the themes 'preservation of European Cultural Heritage', 'contributions of minorities to the present cultural diversity in Europe', 'fighting against prejudices', 'intercultural dialogues' and 'social inclusion'. Five schools from Germany, Turkey, Romania, Spain and Macedonia have established a team by considering the problems and observations related to these themes. They also used a Google Survey to find a reference to their observations.In our schools, we observe that our students are not aware of the fact that minorities have a big contribution to the cultural diversity which we have in Europe now. Unfortunately, we see that our students develop prejudices against minorities rather than appreciate their contributions which ends up with social inclusion problems. We consider this undesired situation as an obstacle to develop a common European identity and more importantly to the preservation of European Cultural Heritage. Within this project, we aim to create an awareness towards minorities and their contribution to cultural diversity; to fight against prejudices; to foster social inclusion so that we can promote 'the sense of togetherness' to cherish European Cultural Heritage. This approach is significant for the rationale of this project because European Cultural Heritage is itself something that we, majorities and minorities, have developed altogether for centuries. In the face of ET 2020 goal “Education should promote intercultural competences…combat all forms of discrimination, equipping all young people to interact positively with their peers from diverse backgrounds”, we have decided to initiate an international school project so as to raise intercultural awareness, promote social inclusion and contribute to the celebrations of 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage by developing a responsibility to preserve and transfer it to the next generations. The project team consists of five schools. The German school, being the coordinator, has a lot of experiences at international school projects. The school is also experienced at using ICT tools for educational studies and also media awareness studies. The Turkish School has already social inclusion studies including a national project and a collabration with an NGO working for the inclusion of Syrian Refugees. The Romanian school has Hungarian and Roma students and they mainly focus on the inclusion problems of these minorities with the help of conflict management and social inclusion studies. The Spanish school tries to solve inclusion and integration problems by adding Mindfulness studies into their core curriculum. Both Spanish and Romanian schools are experienced at Erasmus Plus Strategic Partnerships. The Macedonian school gives importance to the strategy of internationalization as well as social inclusion of minorities. The Macedonian school has no experience at strategic partnerships. So, this project will be a unique experience for this school. Our main target group includes students whose ages are 14-15. For all of the project activities, giving equal opportunities to the majority and minority students is a priority. 2 teachers and 4 students will join each international meeting but we are planning to reach at least 500 people through this project. By following methodologies such as role-playing, making observations, conducting a questionnaire, photographing, video editing, critical thinking, experiential learning and peer learning; our activites mainly focus on developing an intercultural dialogue, creating awareness towards cultural diversity, fighting against prejudices towards minorities, developing inclusive skills and cherishing European Cultural Heritage. We have mostly given importance to workshop studies so as to present relevant strategies to our students. All of the activities have been planned in an integrated way so that related themes could be comprehended more efficiently. Thanks to project activities, the students will get rid of their prejudices against minorities; develop a sense of togetherness; develop respect to cultural diversity; develop responsibility to preserve and transfer European Cultural Heritage and develop their skills of tolerating and empathising, which are essential for social inclusion. Since they are our primary target group, we aim to observe these results on our students. As a secondary target group, we want to reflect these results to the parents and school staff. When we reach parents, we will have reached two generations and when we reach school staff, especially teachers will have an oppurtunity to reflect their gains to their next students. By reaching local environments (neighbouring schools, universities,NGOs) and local authorities (directoriate offices of education and municipalities) through effective dissemination, we hope to see that our project could inspire more institutions to initiate similar studies and have an influence, even a slight one, on the policies.
In this project, it was aimed to focus on the themes 'preservation of European Cultural Heritage', 'contributions of minorities to the present cultural diversity in Europe', 'fighting against prejudices', 'intercultural dialogues' and 'social inclusion'. Five schools from Germany, Turkey, Romania, Spain and Macedonia managed to work efficiently on these themes for two years. Our main target group included students whose ages are 14-15. However, we managed to reach all school staff, parents and also school envrionment with local and international activities. For all of the project activities, giving equal opportunities to the majority and minority students was a priority. We did four mobilities including 2 teachers and 4 students from each team. During these mobilities, all of the student participants involved in different activities such as workshops, presentations and UNESCO visits. What is a refugee?, Media Awareness, Conflict Management, Traditional Foods of Minorities, Tradition Keepers, Stones Have Souls are just a few examples of the international activities. Moreover, each school conducted local activities to develop the project such as Syrian Refugee Integration Interview, Moment Europe Selfie Activity and E-Book of Interactions among Different Languages. In the implementation process of those activities, different methodologies such as role-playing, making observations, conducting a questionnaire, photographing, video editing, critical thinking, experiential learning and peer learning were used. Thanks to project activities, we observe that our students got rid of some of their prejudices against minorities; developed a sense of togetherness; developed respect to cultural diversity; developed responsibility to preserve and transfer European Cultural Heritage and developed their skills of tolerating and empathising, which are essential for social inclusion. We also observe that we were successful at reaching those goals with the help of evaluation tools we used after each activitiy and also the final survey. Within two years, we managed to reach different target groups and we believe that reaching that range will also bring long term benefits such as inspiring other similar project applications in the national or international levels especially the ones related to social inclusion and xenophobia; being a model for the unexperienced schools at Erasmus+ programmes and the last but not the least tranferring experiences and insights to the next generation and present environment. All of the activity processes, activity results and evaluation results can be seen in the following dissemination tools: • Project webpage: https://www.minorities-europe.eu/ • Etwinning • Instagram / minoritieseurope • Facebook / Minorities Europe