Migration for political, religious, or economic reasons has become a top topic since the beginning of the Millennium. People of different ethnicities are streaming to the West and North, seeking liberty and a decent life. European people are facing a new wave of ethnic mingling. All this has provoked in recent years a new wave of racism and intolerance spreading across Europe and reaching schools. The project "Searching for home" is a reaction to this trend aiming at deepening the understanding of migration as part of our European cultural heritage, enhancing students' critical thinking skills and immunity against populism and demagogy, tolerance for the foreign and unknown, humanitarian thinking, developing English language skills, understanding of history and sociology, research, graphic and stylistic skills and self-management when abroad. Five schools have decided to participate in the project which will last 24 months. The partner group comprises schools from the Czech Republic (the coordinating school), Poland, Portugal and two schools from Ireland. All of these nations have an important history of emigration, several times in history their citizens looked for a better life abroad and contributed to the target land´s economy, culture, and politics. This historical responsibility should be mirrored in our tolerance and willingness to help other people today when all the participating countries are becoming or have become target lands for other, less fortunate nations. It is estimated that around 100 students and 25 teachers will participate in the project directly by getting involved in the five learning activities planned (one in each school). The learning activities aim at raising awareness of migration in Europe and acquainting students with the cultures of other partner schools through visits to various historical and cultural institutions, workshops, debates and presentations. Additional work on eTwinning is planned which will be based on researching prominent historical figures who were immigrants or people in exile and preparing presentations and papers to be shared with the other partners. The end product of the project will be Exilopaedia - a book or booklet consisting of the students' works connected with immigrants they researched throughout the entire project. The expected results and impact: - students will be more tolerant and open to different cultures - students will learn about immigration in Europe and deepen its understanding as part of our rich, shared heritage - students will feel more confident to speak English and make new friends also among people of different origins - students will increase their knowledge about the four participating countries - students will develop critical thinking and research skills - the five participating schools will get integrated through collaborative activities. In the long term we hope for the participants of the project to become true 21st century citizens of Europe who understand different processes that take place on our continent, are able to form opinions about them using critical thinking skills and challenging those conceptions which have no foundation in reality but are a result of prejudice and ignorance.
In the four years since our project began, the geopolitical situation has changed, but the topic of migration has lost none of its topicality. In light of current events, especially the war in Ukraine, we see the focus of Searching for Home as timeless. Overall, the project has been successfully implemented, but at the cost of significant, unexpected and severely limiting obstacles caused mainly by the Covid-19 pandemic. We held 3 of the 5 planned international meetings of the partner schools. In 4 of the 5 schools, pupils have been working on the common theme for a long time and the result is the planned publication Exilopaedia, a compilation of essays on famous emigrants. The basic thesis of the Searching for Home project was that European nations have also experienced (or, recently, even are experiencing) waves of emigration caused by wars, political reasons or difficult economic situations. Our ancestors came to other cultures and enriched them in many ways. Each participating student was asked to choose one person of their nationality who became famous abroad and describe their life story. In this way, they should realize that every migrant in the world has a compelling reason for leaving home, is a representative of a personal story and a bearer of human potential. The purpose was to increase the students' immunity to demagogy and populist trivialisation of the topic of migration as a risk, a source of ethnic problems, an economic burden and parasitism. Unfortunately, the project suffered difficulties during its implementation. As a result of the covid measures in early 2020, we had to cancel the planned mobilities before they started and extend the duration of the project by one year. In the meantime, most of the participating pupils left the schools, the eTwinning community disintegrated and a non-time of limbo set in, when in a climate of online learning, different conditions in the partner countries and complete uncertainty about future developments, it was not in our power to motivate new groups of pupils to participate in the extra project work. It was only in spring 2021 that it was possible to engage new participants and to plan a promising timetable of mobilities. However, the hygienic situation in Ireland did not allow local schools to travel or receive visitors. One Irish school therefore left the project and the other one participated only on-line. The second major problem was the drastic change in economic conditions in Europe, which all the partner schools faced, each in a different sense - the difficulty of funding deferred mobilities with increased numbers of participants in different distance bands, the unprecedented rise in the price of paper and other material inputs, the fluctuations in exchange rates, the uncertainty of the Irish school as to whether it would be entitled to any funding at all if the mobilities haven´t been carried out... Even so, together we have arrived at a result that fulfils the project intentions as far as possible, and we have compiled the Exilopaedia book in spring 2022. It is slightly smaller in scope and half the planned print run, but this is in line with the final number of participating schools and pupils and the current entry prices. It is already clear that the project has had an excellent response from pupils, parents and the school community. Pupils have made new and lasting friendships and are planning further visits to each other. Pupils and teachers alike have significantly improved their conversational and stylistic skills in English, many of them have crossed the borders of their homeland for the first time ever and have gained new confidence. They learned to work on a given topic for a long period of time according to common criteria, to see a piece of work through to completion and to realise the cost and effort required to gain a reward, for example in the form of travel, or in our case, co-authoring a book. They gained new experiences in financial literacy, managed their own pocket money while travelling and took an active interest in the school budget for individual trips and other items. For the participating schools, the Erasmus+ project is an important part of their image, with parents putting their kids into them knowing that these are schools where "the children receive more" and "they get somewhere", both in terms of learning and geography. Some of the participating schools are already planning to reach for the Erasmus acreditation and implement further international projects.