Our project "Celebrations in Europe - Let's celebrate Europe" is looking for a positive perspective of European unification. The students should experience and communicate differences and similarities of their cultural heritage as confident citizens of one European Union that consists of different regions and different countries. The participating schools are located in Germany, Romania, France and Belgium. The schools teach young people from 16-19, who are the target group of the project. The schools teach general as well as vocational education. The project reaches its goal to show diversity and unity at the same time by a European celebration at the project's end. By then we will raise awareness that we are based on our European heritage which is however interwoven in the second decade of the second millennium. This openness and the exchange require life-long learning of all participating individuals as well as a democratic way of communication which can be set as a model for society and the EU. These big goals should be reached in four steps and via manageable tasks and interim results. The schools are linked via eTwinning and work individually on the project tasks before and between meetings. In a first step the students exchange their views on different Christmas traditions. These are present in all member states notwithstanding the individual faith of the participants. During this first meeting the students prepare a Christmas celebration that incorporates elements of all countries. Additionally, we are going to create a family album with photos of the participant's families Christmas celebrations of different decades. We are also going to collect different recipes and Christmas carols in a booklet. This step of the project offers a glance into the private life of families in different countries that will show the things we have in common and will practice the appreciation for existing differences. The next step is devoted to the Europe of regions. The schools are going to participate in local or regional festivities and document their activities. In the project meeting they will find out that all regions enjoy their celebrations differently by introducing the respective customs to one another. Intensifying their involvement in their community's activities they live active citizenship and deepen social cohesion. In a further step the participants are going to investigate national holidays of the participating countries. Firstly, they are to be historically classified. The students will raise their awareness for the manifold developments in European history in different parts of Europe throughout the centuries. Mostly, national holidays celebrate a process of unification. The students will find reconsider in how far these processes have been successful and if these developments can be a model for European unification. They will reflect on the different intensities the nations celebrate their national holidays as well as on national landmarks and stereotypes. They are going to create an online quiz on this topic. The project culminates in the European celebration at the last project meeting. Having had the European perspective in view during and between the first meetings, by then contents and reason of the European holiday will have been identified by then. The holiday will be celebrated using the unified creative force of all our students and teachers of general and vocational education. While students in hairdressing will develop the European outfit, the designers are going to design the invitation, the students from catering/housekeeping are going to plan the buffet, media experts digitalize the event and the students form social care will plan the course of the event with activities such as a fashion show, role plays, songs, lotteries, just to mention a few. Additionally, the results of the project so far are going to be exhibited, to manifest how much the four schools have become a European project team. The celebration is not only for students, but open to the complete school community and parents as well as representatives of the communities. The European holiday will become part of the yearly school calendar and will be celebrated in school and via eTwinning with the partners yearly, thus upholding the positive European perspective in our schools.
Our project "Celebrations in Europe - Let's celebrate Europe" is looking for a positive perspective of European unification. The students should experience and communicate differences and similarities of their cultural heritage as confident citizens of one European Union that consists of different regions and different countries. The participating schools are located in Germany, Romania and Belgium. The schools teach young people from 16-19, who are the target group of the project. The French school, who was still part of the project during the application process, left the project before the beginning of activities. The schools teach general as well as vocational education. The French school leaving the project was, however, not the only change in our project activities. Just as all other projects of the same term, Corona got in our way. So the other involved schools had to replan the activities and to reschedule how to share responsibitlities in order to accomplish as much as possible from the initial plan of the project. In a first step the students exchanged their views on different Christmas traditions during the mobility in Romania. These are present in all member states notwithstanding the individual faith of the participants. During this first meeting the students prepared a Christmas celebration incorporating elements of all countries. Additionally, we created a family album with photos of the participants` families Christmas celebrations of different decades. We also collected different recipes and Christmas carols in a booklet. This step of the project offered a glance into the private life of families in different countries that shows the things we have in common and practices the appreciation for existing differences. The next step was devoted to the Europe of regions. Different to the schedule this mobility did not take place in the French school (as they had left the project) but in a youth hostel near Strasbourg. The schools had participated in local or regional festivities and documented their activities. In the project meeting they presented the customs partly in participatory activities. So everybody had a first-hand experience that all regions enjoy their celebrations differently but have fun nonetheless. In preparation for the activities they also intensified their involvement in their community's activities they live active citizenship and deepen social cohesion. After this mobility, no meetings were possible for quite some time. The co-ordinators kept in touch, but most European teachers were busy keeping up with distance learning under pandemic conditions. There were individual contacts between students who had made friends during the meetings and between individual colleagues. We only anticipated a short interruption of the project, which proved to have been too optimistic. Nevertheless, we applied hopefully for a prolongation of the project. For this reason we did not replace the meetings by virtual meetings as we thought there would be enough time to catch up on our original plan. The prologation, though, led to unforeseeable difficulties as two coordinators left their school in the third year. Due to the shorter cycle of students in vocational schools also many of the participating students finished their courses and left school. In the spring of 2022 the restrictions were partly lifted and a mobility was planned at rather short notice. This meeting should enclose steps 3 and 4 of the original plan. Due to organisational problems the Belgian group could not participate. mmeting started with a lively group discussion about European involvement that was meant for the participants to get to know one another. In an amicable ambiance we talked about European value and the EU. The Romanian students proudly presented their project "Te story of you" that consisted of presenting the treasures of Romanian spirituality, and traditions about the important moments in human life, such as birth, growing up, marrying, death,.. The students presented their national celebrations and talked about the positive impact of the European Union for each individual. In this context we also planned a digital Europe Day on the 9th May. As most of the German teachers were afflicted by Corona in the weeks surrounding Easter, the Rumanian school celebrated this day alone. This project, however, offers many possibilities for continuing our collaboration.