The project "Cultural and nature heritage is European strength and treasure", CHEST, has been prepared and will be implemented by a strategic partnership of 4 organizations from Poland (coordinator), Lithuania, Turkey and Portugal. From this group, we start cooperation for the first time with the organizations from Lithuania and Portugal (this one had no possibility to participate in such projects).The participants of the project from all participant organizations will be 75 adults or seniors from the group of educators and candidates for educators, including volunteers. The aim of this project is to create opportunities for adult and seniors, to increase their educational opportunities and social activation, but also to increase the sense of responsibility for shared cultural and environmental European values. Due to the fact that each organization in our partnership has similar statutory goals and performs similar tasks, we intend to develop strategic relationships between them, which will allow each of these organizations to improve their existing programs, activities and tasks.The strategic partnership created under this project will provide great opportunities to strengthen partner organizations and enrich their educational activities. Obtained additional experience and new information resources, educational materials for new programs will certainly expend and improve their quality of educational work and activities. We assume lasting future cooperation between all organizations of this partnership after the after the end of the project. As part of the project, the idea of "Cultural and natural heritage for common European values, cultural impressions for the common future of Europe" will be promoted. Treating cultural and natural heritage as an "integration toolnd a carrier of knowledge, project participants will receive knowledge about this specific richness of Europe.This is to contribute to European integration on the one hand, and on the other as a social value will affect the cultural sensitivity of the European community. We will also create an opportunity to promote and disseminate this knowledge. Every cultural and natural heritage is not owned by only one country or nation, but is common to all humanity and all people are heirs of this world heritage. That is why we will deal with common elements of this heritage connecting the nations of the partners of this project, developing inter alia international routes of this heritage. We want to create a "CHEST" to which our strategic partnership will bring a wide and diverse knowledge about our common cultural and natural heritage, encouraging everyone to learn about this European wealth and complement this "CHEST". Descriptions of visited objects, routes developed, information about all kinds of culture and nature, photos and videos will be presented on the common website of the CHEST project, which will be an information base on the cultural and natural heritage of Europe and Turkey. This site will be publicly available, and those who enter this site may be will able to post on it their own impressions, descriptions, comments, photos and videos about places, objects or customs, traditions, rites, which they have visited. In this way we will achieve the next objective of this project, which is to contribute to increasing the opportunities to learn about the cultural and natural heritage of countries and to contribute to the integration and strengthening of the sense of pride and unity of the EU and Turkey. Project education in this field will be supplemented and enriched with practical knowledge about rituals, customs, artistic craftsmanship and traditional crafts, characteristic of intangible cultural heritage of partner regions, through: Teaching traditional folk songs and dances and their presentations in special open performances during international educational meetings. Getting to know folk traditional wedding rituals and customs and searching for their remnants in contemporary wedding customs. Teaching participants the traditional folk songs and dances of their own region and possibly partner countries and their presentation during international educational meetings. Painting pictures depicting cultural or natural heritage and organize public exhibitions of these paintings during some international educational meetings. Organizing public exhibitions of regional cultural heritage exhibits during educational partner's meetings. Taking pictures and recording videos showing the objects and places of cultural and natural heritage, learned during the design workshops and traditional rites, customs, rituals and placing them on the websites of the CHEST project and on the Facebook. Organizing an international competition and a publicly available exhibition of the best photos from visited places and presented cultural events. Developing an album of known routes of cultural and natural heritage and a book presenting the main idea of the project.
The CHEST project was prepared and implemented by a partnership of 4 organizations from Poland, Lithuania, Turkey and Portugal. The main participants in the project in all organizations were educators. The project promoted the theme "Cultural and natural heritage for common European values, cultural impressions for the common future of Europe". The aim of this project was to create opportunities for adult students, including seniors, to increase their chances for social activation, develop a sense of responsibility for common European values and develop strategic ties between partners that will allow each of these organizations to improve their current activities and tasks. The second goal of the project was to increase the number of educators, expand and develop their competences and create educational materials. The subject of the project was treated by our partnership as a specific tool for creating paths for improving the skills and integration of adults and seniors and as a carrier of knowledge about social value influencing the cultural sensitization of the European community, and we used the process of learning about cultural and natural heritage as an integration tool.
The premise for the implementation of this project was the need to create opportunities for adult students to increase their chances of social activation through education, but also to increase the sense of responsibility for common European cultural and natural values. That is why we needed to create motivation to learn English and IT for all participants of the project, especially for seniors of the UTA from Białystok and Rio Maior, and thus reduce the social exclusion of seniors. Due to the fact that each organization in our partnership carries out similar educational tasks, we needed to develop strategic ties between us, which would allow each of these organizations to improve the existing programs, activities and tasks. We wanted to obtain additional experiences, new information resources, educational materials for the creation of new educational programs to expand the scope and quality of our organizations' activities. We needed to increase the number of educators and increase their skills and competences. We needed to create an educational program base on the subject of cultural and natural heritage of the partner countries, including the beginning of such a base on the Internet.