"Happiness is not a Destination, it is a Way of Life." When starting a new project in general, it is essential to acknowledge and question the reasons, needs and intended goals of the new Project. So it was with our Project "Goodwill Ambassadors - Let's Do Good Together". Our Project started off with questions such as: Do we want to make a difference? Can we make a difference? How can we make a difference? What will be the added value of our Project? In This Summary we aim to make our intensions clear: We are here to make a difference and we believe we can do it! When planning this Project with our respective Partners, we did some background reseach at our schools and came to a conclusion: a number of our pupils are selfcentered and not very kind to each other. Some lack the ability to notice the good around them and the heart to be grateful for what they have. Pupils also seem to have little or no experience in doing good deeds or taking part in volunteer work. We decided to tackle this grievance and try to change the focus from the pupils themselves to others. In doing this we believe our pupils can gain some lifelong skills that will improve their futures as humans, friends, partners, parents, employees and fellow EU-citizens. Our Project reaches for strenghtening social dialogue in schools and daily surroundings. Strong social dialogue will enhance inclusion and equity and finally influence the participants wellbeing. This Project will promote engaging, connecting and empowering youth in their communities. Our Project aims to increase pupils happiness through the methods of Positive Education, based on Positive Psychology. Five specific areas of Positive Education will be studied by students: "Caring, Compassion, Positivity, Gratitude and Happiness" We are 5 countries involved: Finland, France, Spain, Italy and Cuprys. We are Secondary Schools and our Pupils are aged between 13-16 years. From each country we have 2-4 teachers and some 20 pupils involved. The pupils travel to the Partner Countries with a Group of 6 pupils and 2-4 teachers at a time. The pupils joining the Program will be selected carefully. The main criteria is the level of their engagement to the Project and also their willingness to participate in the Goodwill - part of the Program. We are interested in how eager they are to grow in their humanity. The Erasmus pupils will be named "Goodwill Ambassadors". In our project we use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as the framework through which each Partner School chooses their perspective of doing good. We chose the UN Goals as we think they are very current topics worldwide and they give a concrete view to our Project. Our project is based on one common UN Goal between the Partner Schools: the Goal nr 3 "Good Health and Wellbeing". We believe this Goal is the priority number one: we want our pupils to grow happy, healthy, strong and caring adults who know the meaning of compassion and helping others. We put emphasis on the 'Mental' Health and Wellbeing. This goal is implemented by the Goodwill Ambassadors. Each Partner School will also work with an additional UN Goal: Finland: "Quality Education" France: "Gender Equality" Spain: "Climate Action" Cyprus: "No Poverty" Italy: "Affordable and Clean Energy" All the activities combined with the chosen Goals will improve pupils social and citizenship skills, cultural awareness and also deepen their comprehension of EU and the state of our beloved Globe. In our Project we will have the main focus on the Goodwill Ambassadors: the Erasmus-pupils who will spread good deeds, starting from themselves and reaching out to their wider everyday life surroundings. In doing these pre-planned GWA acitivities, the pupils will learn about compassion and gratitude, gain happiness in their lives and grow wider perspective to life and to what it has to offer. We strongly believe that with this Project our pupils will grow in their undestanding and respect towards people around them and also those in need. The pupils will also develop self-compassion and learn useful tools of Positive Education to improve their life skills. As a result of the Project the pupils awareness of our EU-Neighbours and our Globe will grow. The Project will give our pupils a chance to improve their communication, leadership and English language skills - all which are to be considered the types of skills that are needed for lifelong learning. What comes to the long term learning skills: in the expected results of the project, we emphasize on such life skills that may not be measurable traditionally. They are for example improvement in pupils school motivation, happiness, willingness to help others and noticing the good around them: skills that are at the top of the list of skills we are eager to see our pupils to have gained from the Project. The Project hopes to prove the pupils that happiness is the way of life and a bridge towards Empowered lives and resilient
"Happiness is not a Destination, it is a Way of Life." When starting a new project, it is essential to acknowledge and question the reasons, needs and intended goals of the new project. Hence, our project "Goodwill Ambassadors - Let's Do Good Together" started off with questions such as: Do we want to make a difference? Can we make a difference? How can we make a difference? What will be the added value of our Project? When planning this project with our respective partners, we did some background research at our schools and came to a conclusion: a number of our pupils are self centered and not very kind to each other. Some lack the ability to notice the good around them and the heart to be grateful for what they have. Some pupils also seem to have little or no experience in doing good deeds or taking part in voluntary work. We decided to tackle this problem and try to change the focus from the pupils themselves to others. In doing this we believed our pupils could gain some lifelong skills that would improve their futures as humans, friends, partners, parents, employees and EU citizens. Our pupils in each country have worked as good will ambassadors doing good deeds. Both pupils and teachers have improved our awareness of the importance of a balanced existence and how easily we can bring joy and happiness to those around us. As a consequence, we have tried - and we are convinced we have succeeded in, first of all, becoming aware of the needs of people around us, our friends and families, but also of our extended families, our immediate environment and finally of the world at large. Secondly, we have made an effort to improve the wellbeing and happiness of our communities, by taking actions such as bringing comfort to those who suffer or helping those around us in our daily actions. Our project aimed at strengthening social dialogue in schools and daily surroundings. Strong social dialogue enhanced inclusion and equity and finally influenced the participants' wellbeing. This project connected and empowered youth in their communities. Our project increased pupils' happiness through the methods of positive education which is based on positive psychology. This was implemented by the work of the goodwill ambassadors and lectures by experts both online and during the mobilities. Due to Covid we faced some challenges in fully reaching all the results but both pupils and teachers became familiar with positive education. The countries involved in this project are: Finland, France, Spain, Italy and Cyprus. The participating schools are secondary schools and the pupils are aged between 13 and 16 years. From each country we have 2-4 teachers and approximately 20 pupils involved. The pupils were to travel to the partner countries with a group of 5 or more pupils and 2-4 teachers at a time. Many mobilities were cancelled over the course of the three years due to Covid19 pandemic. The pupils joining the program were selected carefully. We needed to select new pupils due to project time being extended. The main criteria was the level of their engagement to the project and also their willingness to participate in the Goodwill - part of the Program. We were interested in how eager they were to grow in their humanity. The Erasmus pupils were named "goodwill ambassadors”. We chose the UN goals as we think they are very current topics worldwide and they give a concrete view to our project. Each country had their respective UN goal. Finland': "Quality Education", France: "Gender Equality", Spain: "Climate Action", Cyprus: "No Poverty", Italy: "Affordable and Clean Energy" The activities on these topics consisted of deeds by goodwill ambassadors such as reading challenges, writing letters to elderly, visits, presentations etc. All the activities combined with the chosen goals improve pupils' social and citizenship skills, cultural awareness and also deepen their comprehension of EU and the state of the globe. Erasmus pupils did good deeds, starting from themselves and reaching out to their wider everyday life surroundings. The pupils developed self compassion and learned useful tools of positive education to improve their life skills. As a result of the project the pupils' awareness of our EU neighbors and our globe grew. The project gave our pupils a chance to improve their communication, leadership and English language skills - all of which are the types of skills that are needed for lifelong learning. This would have happened even more, had not so many mobilities been canceled and rescheduled due to the course of the project time. Still we are sure that our pupils and teachers gained a lot from this project. They learned about other countries, became global and compassionate citizens.