Cultural heritage shapes us and our everyday life and we find it in every part of our life. It represents the diversity and richness of our cultural traditions and connects Europe through a common history. It is very important to understand it, to respect it and to find a way to bring it closer within the European space. The cultural heritage brings people together and contributes to cohesion. Together with tourism, it supports the growth of economy and job creation in cities and regions and it is crucial for Europe's relations with the rest of the world. In the sense of our region and a wider European criterion, it represents a great potential that we must make better use of. Our project consists in creating a fictitious travel agency to idetify and describe the cultural heritage of the regions of the partner schools in various forms (a brochure, a glossary, a website, arranging trips, mascots), to attract new clients, to use the theoretical knowledge of students in practice to enable them to enter the labour market and to consolidate their key competences. The main aim of the project is to increase entrepreneurial skills among the students aged 16 - 19 to make them more active not only at local labour market. We want to raise students´awareness of cultural heritage of the region through a fictitious travel agency the output of which will be a brochure of landmarks in the region the part of which will be a glossary of every day phrases in 5 languages (English, Slovak, Polish, Italian and Spanish), a website of the travel agency and arranging a tour of the region. We also want to develop cultural awareness of the students and the public, to develop partnership of the students and the schools involved in the project not only at regional level but also at international level, in particular with the partners from Poland, Italy and Spain, and, last but not least, to consolidate the key competencies of the students. The students´activities (identifying and describing cultural heritage in the region, gathering information about it, processing the information in digital form - in the form of a brochure or a website) will contribute to raising awareness of the social and economic importance of cultural heritage and will celebrate cultural wealth and diversity of Europe. The cultural heritage connects people and contributes to more cohesive communities. It is unique intermediary of all people of all ages from different social background, cultures and countries. This is the way that we would like to link activities with the aims that we have set up. The expected impact on the participants / target groups will be as follows: - personal growth of the participants (independence, responsibility, flexibility) as well as their professional thinking, - improvement of the language competences (general and professional) and communication skills, - improvement of the key competences and skills of the participants, - expanding professional knowledge and skills, - the possibility to know new forms of working methods and procedures, to solve problems together in a team, - teaching the students how to be a responsible customer (how to protect environment), how to respect cultural heritage and traditions, - development of learning about Europe cultural heritage and preserving their own cultural identity, respect other nations, - the opportunity to learn work ethics and discipline at a workplace in a foreign country, - increasing the chance to find a job at domestic or foreign labour market, - teach participants through ICT to gather information and prepare presentations and projects, - supporting social inclusion of disadvantaged pupils, - enhancing the value of respect and the importance to be an EU citizen. By participating in the project, we will contribute to the development of participating schools in the long-term as follows: - enhancing attractiveness of the vocational training, - increasing the students´interest to study foreign languages not only at general level, - increasing the attractiveness of the participating schools within their regions, - increasing awareness of cultural heritage within the European dimension, - increasing cultural and language reputation, - keeping effective partnerships and establishing new ones, - flexibility of teaching methods and modifying the Curriculum, - internationalization and modernization of the organization, - strengthening and expanding the cooperation with the foreign partners and perspectives to find a job at European labout market, - getting know different cultures, mentality and traditions, - exchanging good parctices, - transparency of knowledge and skills, - implementation of knowledge and experience, dissemination of a good name of the schools, - expanding the network of partners for the future E+ projects.
Cultural heritage shapes us and our daily lives and can be found in every part of our lives. It represents the diversity and richness of our cultural traditions and unites Europe through its common history. It is very important to understand it, to respect it and to find a way to bring it closer to the European scope. The cultural heritage unites people and contributes to cohesion. Together with tourism, it supports economic growth and job creation in cities and regions and it is essential for Europe relations with the rest of the world. Our project consisted in creating a fictitious travel agency to identify and describe the cultural heritage of the regions of partner schools in various forms - a brochure, a glossary, a website, a business plan of the travel agency and a mascot and a logo of the travel agency. The main goal of the project was to direct students aged 16-19 to entrepreneurship so that they would be able to start their own business and be active in labor market after graduating from high school. We wanted to raise students' awareness of the regions cultural heritage through a fictitious travel agency the output of which is the brochure of monuments in the region, the glossary of everyday phrases in 5 languages (English, Slovak, Polish, Italian and Spanish), the travel agency website, the business plan, the mascot and the logo. We managed to develop the cultural awareness of the students and the public, the partnership of the students and the schools involved in the project not only at the regional level but also at the international level, especially with the partners from Poland, Italy and Spain, and last but not least we strengthened students' key competencies. Students' activities (identification and description of cultural heritage in the region, gathering information about it, processing information in digital form) have contributed to raising awareness of the social and economic importance of cultural heritage. Through the activities on the project, we have contributed to the long-term development of the partner schools involved, we have increased the attractiveness of vocational education and students' interest in studying foreign languages not only at the general level, we have modified the Curriculum. With this project, we have made all partners´ schools within their regions more attractive and strengthened the internationalization and modernization of the organizations. We increased students' awareness of the cultural heritage within the European dimension, students had the opportunity to learn about different cultures, mentalities and traditions in the partners´ countries. We will continue to strengthen our cooperation with the foreign partner schools and exchange experience and knowledge so we can implement and spread the good name of our school. Thanks to this project, our network of the partners for the existing as well as the future projects has expanded.