The Project “From a dreamer to a leader” focuses on three issues, important in terms of the educational needs of contemporary, changing Europe. It is a project which integrates subjects like: entrepreneurship, social exclusion and cultural heritage into a coherent whole. We want the project participants to develop the sense of initiative, expertise in running business and skills necessary for effective and creative working towards reaching common goals. We strongly believe that by focusing our efforts on persons who are excluded from the community for many different reasons, we can give them a chance for better future, boost their self-esteem and motivate them to make an effort themselves. We are sure that working on the project will lead to promoting and better understanding of the issue of social economy, where financial value is as important as the social one. And lastly, entwining the topic of cultural heritage, which has a dimension of a market product too, we will be able to develop the partners’ awareness and knowledge about the historical truth, traditions and religions of the partner countries. We will have the opportunity to cultivate the sense of beauty and civilisational unity of Europe. We will directly involve about 50 students and 5-8 staff members from each country in the project activities. However, we estimate to involve about 5,000 - 10,000 people from all the project countries in the indirect project activities (cooperation, participation in events, exploiting the project outputs). They will be other students, parents, partner school staff members, local community, governing authorities, non-governmental organisations, entrepreneurs and internet users. To reach the project goals and meet the planned objectives we are going to implement a lot of activities. We will organise 5 students exchanges, one in each of the partner countries, 3 short-term joint staff training events and 2 long-term study mobilities of pupils for 2 students from Poland and 2 from Portugal. During the mobilities we will share the knowledge of cultural heritage of the partner countries (field trips, presentations about countries, Festival of Cultures, etc.), experiences and good practices (participation in demonstration lessons, workshops, project-based learning, etc.) we will also develop language and social skills. Other tasks will include: setting up and managing the Student Cooperative, designing Escape Room, carrying out projects in international groups (“My small homeland”, multimedia tour guides, multimedia exchange trip journals, contests, designing a calendar), setting up and running a blog, meetings with the local entrepreneurs, cooperation with local community and on-governmental organisations, (Civil Educational Center, Career Counseling Center, voluntary organisations, etc.). We hope that the listed actions will lead to particular results. We would like the project participants, both the teachers and the students, to develop the sense of initiative, entrepreneurial skills, become more creative, receive better grades in business basics. We hope they will develop knowledge about running business, vocational subjects, history, culture and customs of the partner countries, their language competences and motivation for further participation in both formal and non-formal education, self-confidence, openness towards people from disadvantaged groups, expertise in strategies and educational systems in partner countries, digital and technological competences. We are planning to use the following methods: workshops, trainings, participant observation, discussions, brainstorming, project-based learning, performance evaluation, surveys, language games, WebQuests and other. We are confident that the cooperation will bring about many long-term benefits for the partner schools, project participants and other people involved. We hope to reinforce the image of the partner schools as fast-growing, innovative facilities, which provide development opportunities for both students and staff members. We would like the project to facilitate the students professional career, to boost the schools recruitment, to cause better adjusting of the educational systems to the opportunities offered by marketplace and to tighten the ties between business and the excluded, especially from the partner schools. And finally, we hope to have the opportunity to promote the idea of EU projects as a way to implement sustainable, good changes in school.
“From a Dreamer to a Leader” project was carried out by 5 secondary schools from European countries: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Italy. Our partnership is an example of great cooperation based on such ideas as: promotion of development, supporting equality and protection of cultural diversity. Our paths crossed thanks to the possibilities created by the European Commission - we came across one another via the eTwinning platform. After some time we discovered that we have quite a lot to offer to one another. On one hand, we all struggled with similar problems, we wanted to achieve similar goals, but on the other hand, we felt we complemented each other. We immediately noticed we could benefit a lot from this partnership. We wished that the activities we were planning for all the project participants would bring about such results as: increase in entrepreneurial skills, increase in business experience, increase in motivation for development, increase in language and social competences, better skills to use ICT, better self esteem, increase in readiness to work despite differences, bigger awareness of Europe’s cultural wealth, more open attitude towards persons from disadvantaged communities. To reach these goals we took a number of steps. We carried out 5 short-term student exchanges (two of them online), 1 long-term mobility in Portugal and 3 short-term joint staff training events. Unfortunately, our partnership was disrupted by the outbreak of COVID19. We couldn’t have predicted the pandemic when we were planning the activities, however this experience proved that our partnership was really strong and that we were capable of conducting all short-term mobilities without extending the project. We perfectly realised that giving up student exchanges, which we hadn’t carried out before pandemic, would deprive the participants of the chance to learn all the useful skills, making inspirational acquaintances, getting to know a lot of important facts, practising the language, peer interaction and all the other wonderful experiences. All the partners eagerly joined the preparations for the virtual exchanges, even though it meant an entirely new experience for all of us. We had had experience with online teaching but organizing and conducting a valuable virtual meeting for over a hundred persons is another story. The exchanges which were supposed to happen in Bulgaria and Lithuania took place online and they were truly successful. We spent the time between mobilities mainly creating, running and developing our Students’ Coops, running the project blog, organizing and performing numerous activities aimed at reaching the project goals. These activities were among all: cooperation with local Career Counseling Centers, with Center for Citizenship Education and Polish Humanitarian Action, organizing Entrepreneurship Days, participating in charity and voluntary events, working for the project pedagogical teams, participating in promotional events and events disseminating the idea of Erasmus+ programme and many more. We were regularly performing evaluating activities, drew conclusions and implemented necessary changes. After analysing the evaluation surveys, the observations and interviews we concluded that all the project objectives had been reached. We managed to develop entrepreneurial skills in all the participants, to raise motivation, improve language skills, self esteem, to sensitize to the beauty of the surrounding world, particularly the uniqueness of indigenous culture and art, to the language and historical values of all the partner countries. We would like all the activities to be continued in the future. We are particularly going to carry on developing the Students’ Coops, publishing online materials about socio-cultural issues of European countries (blogs, vlogs or podcasts). We are planning to use our Escape Rooms for educational reasons, during integrating events, future projects and during promotional events. We will definitely take advantage of all the learned knowledge, skills, tools, applications and methods. We believe that what we created will evolve, bear fruit and inspire new challenges. We would love to continue moving ahead with international cooperation since we only see benefits of it. We have been using our last project outputs up to now and we will definitely use this project outcomes. We have a lot to offer but we can still learn a lot.