"Your Health is Your Wealth", covers the essential goals stated for Erasmus+ projects. Our project will increase key competences among school staff and students as they work with people who have skills specifically related to the concept of healthy living. Through internationalisation everyone involved will be able to implement individual areas of improvement in relation to their lifestyle. As the last part of the Erasmus+ goals state, it is essential for students today to develop their language skills. Our project language is English and, as the students will stay in host families, they will gain experience of the culture of the countries involved in addition to the different education systems of the countries in the project. As the United Nations' Sustainable Development goals concerning Good Health and Well-Being states, "Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages is important to build prosperous societies." This notion is something that has gained traction in popular media and individual lifestyle choices in recent years. However, it is clear that there is still much work to be done: Many young people lead sedentary lives with little or no physical activity. They are not aware of the importance of healthy nutrition and physical activities for their overall mental and physical health. Many young people are searching for a way to deal with the demands upon them to perform well at school and to succeed in their life outside school. They need to learn how to lower stress levels and increase their ability to focus on priority targets. Furthermore, we can observe an increase of absenteeism at school, increased obesity, decreased levels of focus and concentration. “Your Health is Your Wealth” aims: to promote a healthy lifestyle through (a) healthy eating, (b) an active lifestyle and (c) supporting mental health and well-being. A survey concerning health and nutrition will provide the necessary data to raise the students' and teachers' awareness of the problems at hand. After analysing the results, students will be able to target the changes and innovations needed to achieve a healthy lifestyle, not only among those individuals involved, but also thereby for their communities and society at large. Some examples of the various types of activities the students will participate in are: skiing, golf, preparing and cooking healthy food and autogenic training. The students will be able to participate in activities they have no or limited prior experience in. This will inspire them to develop a permanent and lasting healthy way of living. The method used in the project will begin at our respective schools where students from each country focus on a certain area of health. During student exchanges we will work in mixed nationality groups to engage in a broad range of recreational and nutritional activities, as well as interactive exercises which both address and promote mental well-being, social responsibility and lasting lifestyle changes. After returning from each exchange, the students will pass on their newly acquired skills to their peers and families. This will be done in many ways, as for example, through school sports clubs where our students coach younger children in different activities and implement mindfulness as a part of that activity. Our students will be ‘ambassadors’ during a Healthy Week at school where they work with their peers to implement what they have learned while working with students from three other countries. Our students will be role models for younger children and classmates when it comes to making healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating well and being aware of unhealthy and harmful products. The results will be published and the conclusions disseminated in a magazine, brochures, a website/blog and on social media platforms. Each student involved in the project will get the title ‘Health Ambassador’ and receive a certificate. The project will directly involve a group of approximately 100 students and a dozen teachers from four countries - Germany, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. The students will represent varying economic, social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Three of the participating schools have worked together previously on an Erasmus+ project. The Polish school is new to our ‘project family’ and we look forward to working with them and benefitting from their new perspectives. Each country will share its focus with the other partners and learn from the topics the different partner schools have specialized in. The ultimate aim of this project is that the experiences and knowledge gained will have a permanent positive impact not only on the students' individual choices, but also in enlightening and educating their peers, their environment and their communities in general. By the end of the project, the students should truly be able to comprehend the meaning of the project title “Your Health is Your Wealth”.
The individuals involved, in the project Your Health is your Wealth, have learned how to lead a healthy lifestyle through healthy eating, an active lifestyle and how to increase mental health and well-being. We helped the students to focus on creating a lifelong healthy lifestyle by raising awareness concerning the significance of physical and mental fitness by introducing healthy nutrition and physical activities as well as mental training such as mindfulness and yoga. The students got an opportunity to improve their English skills as the project language was English and also their IT-skills by using internet platforms and programs to make presentations. We raised awareness of the safe use of social media. We raised the students’ social competence by working in teams, both locally and internationally, and their staying in host families. They learned about each other’s cultures, habits and education systems. Through contact with students from other nationalities they experienced how important language skills are and how similar questions, topics and problems exist among all European people. The schools, in the project, focused on the different areas of health, mentioned above. During the exchanges we worked in mixed nationality groups and after each exchange the students passed over their newly acquired skills to their peers, family, teachers and there were articles in local newspapers to spread it to the community. The students have been ”ambassadors”, at their respective schools, during a Healthy Week where they have taught their peers what they have learned, to pass their knowledge on to students who will hopefully continue to spread their new knowledge to even more students. Mindfulness has been introduced in some classes, co-operation with home-economics and PE and after-lunch walks, when possible, are also an outcome of the project. Some schools have now a close co-operation with local sports clubs. The students now have the skills to choose a healthy life-style. They are aware of the importance of physical activities, healthy food and how to reduce stress. They have an improved understanding and appreciation of other cultures and habits which is of utmost importance for the understanding and acceptance among young people in Europe, but also worldwide.