The slogan for the year 2018 is: Our heritage: where the past meets the future. We desire to make it the main theme of our project. Cultural heritage has a universal value for us as individuals, communities and societies. It is important to preserve and pass on to future generations. What is more, our heritage has a big role to play in building the future of Europe. That is the reason why through this project we want to reach out to young people in particular during the European Year. We are taking advantage of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and engage our students in searching their heritage. We are getting them involved in the journey through the past experiences of their countries, making it meaningful for them and linking to the present situation in their countries and societies. The direct result is to make our students more aware of the cultural diversity that exists in Europe and raise awareness about the similarities that we all have. All our cultures have gone through periods of predicament and learning about them, our students will become more open-minded, tolerant, and knowledgeable, which will make them better citizens in the future. The most important horizontal priority of the project is social and educational value of European heritage. Our aim is to bridge the gap in young people's perception of the surrounding world, to create a bond between the history, culture and tradition of their country arousing from the past, link it with the present and propose the ways to sustain this connection in the future. We will make our students familiar with the theme of social inclusion. We aim at promoting equity and inclusion by facilitating the access to learners with disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities. The school education priority is relevant because we plan to develop students' skills in both theoretical and practical fields of action related to the major topic of the project. Foreign language competence improvement will be vital since all the created material will be in English, as well as the students' online exchanges through forums, social networks and communication. The main results we expect during the project's completion are the development of: - greater awareness about European cultural heritage - cultural competences - linguistic skills - ICT competences - self-awareness through comparison with different cultural experiences - the improvement of management and organisational skills - the inclusion of the disadvantaged groups. The target group will be the students fewer opportunities. We are planning to involve directly circa 300 students from all the partner schools altogether. Considering their age, they will be engaged in different activities. 12 to 14 year old students are going to participate (travel) in the mobilities taking place in all of the partner countries, whereas younger primary 6 to 11 year, are going to participate in project activities at their own schools and take part in the mobilities while placed in their own country. The project will involve pupils from different countries with financial difficulties, foreigners and migrants, children who grow up with one parent or unemployed parents, remote location, and students with learning or behaviour difficulties. Each mobility will take place in a different partner country and will be devoted to theme connected with cultural heritage and social inclusion such as: customs and traditions, link with past and present, ancient heritage, museums and historical tourism, social inclusion of underprivileged groups and modern vision of citizenship. During the project schools will: - Research the theme of cultural heritage in their country, region and locality - Investigate how people's attitude to history and culture has been changing through the years - Look at the case of social inclusion in their countries, regions and localities - Investigate the strategies that are in place at local, national and European level to promote and support culture - Share their findings via the project website and e-Twinning page to be established as part of the project activities. The work is going to be equally shared between all the partner organisations with the supervision of the coordinator. Timetable with the key actions, mobilities, events for follow-up and dissemination, is to ensure that the objectives are going to be fulfilled. Managing the project will be done online via e-mail and video conferences, and during the teachers' meetings starting each year of the project. Evaluation will be done after each vital action, mobility and after each year of the duration. The word of the project, its objectives, long term benefits and achievements is to be disseminated on different levels: locally in each participants' community, regionally through conferences and open days at schools and internationally on the European level thanks to the virtual media such as: eTwinning, project's website, and Erasmus+ Results Platform.
Our partnership was commenced in the year 2018 which had been acclaimed the European Year of Cultural Heritage. Consequently, we became inspired and decided to follow this theme in our Erasmus+ project Learning from the Past to Face the Future and celebrated diverse cultural heritage across Europe - nationally, regionally and locally. The slogan for that year was: Our heritage: where the past meets the future, which we chose as a leitmotiv for our project. After last 2 years of cooperation partners of the project honestly state, that we achieved it. We showed our students that cultural heritage has a universal value for: individuals, communities and societies. Through the partnership we gave an answer to the lack motivation to gain knowledge in history, art, society, languages and culture in our pupils, who tended to question traditional authorities and ceased to follow the role models. That answer for our students was the participation in the European project thanks to which far-fetched, neglected values and traditions became relevant and meaningful for young people. Partners were selected to have a balanced contribution from northern, southern, eastern and western parts of Europe, with their rich cultural heritage and traditions, educational policies and teaching styles and different approaches to the problem of social inclusion. Such a selection ensured the exchange of different approaches to shared problems. Efforts of the teams working on the project were equally divided between all the partner organisations with the supervision of the coordinator. Main objectives, short- and long-term results which we reached in the course of our project for the direct participants, exposed ones, supervising teachers, schools and local communities were: 1Greater awareness about European cultural heritage -Bridging the gap between the history, culture and tradition of our countries, linking them with the present world natural for the students and proposing the ways to sustain this connection in the future. Students experienced their countries history, culture and tradition from a common perspective created through the actions undertaken in the project. 2Inclusion of the socially disadvantaged groups -Familiarizing the students with theme of social inclusion and equity being the common problem in each partner country. -Promoting inclusion by involving in the project students from disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities in comparison to their peers. The project involved pupils from different countries with financial difficulties, foreigners, children who grow up with one parent or unemployed parents, facing remote location, and students with learning or behaviour difficulties. 3Improvement of the linguistic competences -Developing foreign language competence in the participants. English was chosen as the language for communication by all involved groups. All activities contributed to improvement of language skills. The growth in linguistic skills, fluency and accuracy, was visible in the participants. 4Development of ICT competences -Owing to activities and products created via digital equipment and techniques 5Increase in new methods of teaching -Exchange of methods by teachers from different countries of Europe 6Extended curricula at schools -Introducing new approaches and solutions into daily work of partner schools 7Acquiring cultural and social competences characteristic to lifelong learning -Boost of self-awareness and self-reliance-owing to experiencing culture while foreign mobilities, in host families 8Creating an international network of European cooperation between involved schools and communities 9Promoting the project findings via the synergy between Erasmus+ and eTwinning 10Sharing projects results online and disseminating the products of the project, results of a 2 year cooperation to the wide audience. Above listed results were achieved by plenty of activities fulfilled in the course of the project. The products they constitute are tangible; these are students works connected with the theme of cultural heritage i.e.: logo, survey, posters, bookmarks, leaflets, quizzes, ppt presentations, calendar, scrapbook, timelines, films, festive cards, glossaries, lesson plans, documentation etc. There is also a virtual counterpart and digital extension of the results of activities and cooperation on social networks devoted to the project - eTwinning, webpage, school website corners, Erasmus+ Project Results Platform. The quality outputs have been evaluated and measured through the impact on the target groups by conclusions driven from: the direct analysis of surveys, interviews and the reception of the project by the people exposed. Each mobility planned in the Timetable was held in a different partner country and was devoted to themes linked to cultural heritage and social inclusion. Timetable with the key actions, mobilities, events for follow-up and dissemination, and regularly done evaluation, ensured that the objectives have been fulfilled.