Our objective was to improve international and European awareness at the school and reach a point where international projects, big and small, would be part of everyday life at the school. Our goal was to have teachers take part in training opportunities and disseminate what they had learned to the whole school. These results were expected to be, for example, different teaching and learning methods as well as new innovations that would challenge old, conventional methods. In addition, we expected to find new, interesting networking opportunities for possible new projects or innovations, either at teacher or student level. Our goal was also to create a "Pedagogical manual" for the benefit of the school staff. This manual would contain notes, tips and examples of methods and skills that were learned during the mobilities and training events. The goal was to have the manual act as a guide for improving wellbeing, openness and the sense of community at the school. A concrete goal was also to add cooperation between the school and different organisations and businesses in our region.
The main focus of our school was to ingrain international cooperation into a part of everyday life at the school, improve cooperation between the school and its surrounding community as well as improve and develop new models for improving and encouraging a culture of openness, communality and wellbeing at the school. Suininlahti school lies in the countryside, which means the student body is rather homogenous. Our students do not face internationality and cultural differences in their everyday life at school. Therefore, added international cooperation at teacher and student level was needed to transform the culture at the school to be more accepting and knowledgeable of other countries and cultures. At the beginning of the application process, a series of wellbeing surveys were conducted by the municipality. The results supported the experiences of teachers and members of the student council: The level of wellbeing had dropped, both with students and teachers. A common problem at the school had also been the lack of proper "school spirit". These results and observations led us to seek out ways to improve wellbeing and working culture at the school on a European level instead of looking at training opportunities in our region.