Nowadays people can travel very long distances easily or they can start communicating with a complete stranger in a few seconds via internet. Every day contains major events taking place in parts of Europe and having a significant impact on other parts of Europe. We sometimes need to travel around Europe or communicate with other people from other cultures or beliefs. We have stereotypes about other people as we do not know them, their culture, their attitudes, their daily lives. If we knew all these aspects of them, we would not have these condescending prejudices because we would not feel threatened by them. As a result of people interacting, there has been an increasing need to know different cultures and people who have different approaches in their daily lives and have different beliefs or other point of views. We should all have the experience of other people's lives in other parts of Europe so that our behavior would not be driven by false prejudices. It is very important that the pupils get the opportunity to think about their prejudices and to talk about them with young people from all over the Europe. An important way to help them do that is to bring them into contact with other teens to get to know each other better and to learn more about their culture.Young people need to meet in order to develop an understanding and tolerance for other cultures and beliefs in order to make the world a better place. Our aim is to break stereotypes, learn about themselves and each other, harmonize by working together and sharing each other's daily lives and reach linguistic diversity and intercultural awareness. The project is based on breaking stereotypes by revealing the values, finding out the similarities and differences and creating a basis for dialogue among people from different backgrounds. This project will remove the psychological barriers and physical boundaries and help building a friendly atmosphere among the European citizens that also influences and supports a more peaceful and safer Europe. We hope that a strong motivation for our pupils and staff to achieve the objectives of this project in terms of teamwork, social relations, planning and implementing the project, the means of not only information about each other's experiences, but also participating in a partnership with schools using varied communication technologies. Surveys, interviews, checklists, self assesment forms, quizzes, drama, structured play, questioning and self-monitoring will be used as the methods of the activities. As a lasting result, our theme will allow cultural interaction in a holistic manner including all senses mentioned in the project. 1 Staff training event and 4 European Cultural Festivals will be carried out during the meetings. Our topics are: How to be a cultural ambassador? - National and Religious Festivals - Spreading Local Music in Europe - Europe is my home - Archiving Treasures of Europe by audiobook European Cultural Festivals will be open to other students and teachers of the school and from neighboring schools, to families, representatives of authorities, companies, media etc. The pupils will be selected according to the willingness and the context of the activity. The results of our project will be the raised language and ICT skills, gained knowledge about cultures, open attitude and tolerant towards other cultures, European integration, strengthening tights among the participating countries, videos about musical and drama shows, audiobooks. The project refers to a local, regional, national, European and international problem. Multicultural understanding through the activities builds an authentic material that plays a big role in this type of experience-based project to create a lasting change within the individual person involved in the project. Since we combine the practical encounter with the theoretical elements that are used over the internet, we hope to cultivate a deeper understanding as well as the meetings create emotional impressions. We want to create opportunities to increase the ability to understand different cultures for a sustainable multicultural Europe. Thanks to the activities, the materials, the multilingual project website and Twinspace, we will reach the desired impacts at the local, regional, national, European and international levels by making the participants and the stakeholders get a wider understanding about the human rights, the equality of opportunity, the discrimination, the radicalism and the tolerance for foreigners.
Erasmus+ project Cultural festivals unites four European countries: Slovenia (coordinating school), Hungary, Romania and Greece. It was planned that Turkey would also participate in the project, but in January 2020, Turkey announced that they were withdrawing from the partnership and that they had not signed the contract, despite the fact that until then they claimed that they would participate in the project. Thus, we started the project activities only in January 2020. The partner countries prearranged the set goals and planned activities that the partner from Turkey should carry out and reorganized the meetings and mobilities. The main theme of the project is Cultural festivals, including the exchange of good practices. Following the slogan of the European Union "Unity in diversity", schools of different nations learn about their own cultures, in addition to nurturing and preserving them, they also learn about the cultures of other nations, comparing them with their own and learning about them. Unfortunately, among European citizens, we too often come across various stereotypes and prejudices about people from other cultures. We do not understand their values, beliefs, culture and daily life. The goal of the project was to get to know one's own culture and the culture of other European countries, to approach cultural differences with tolerance, to break stereotypes and to reveal the values of other cultures. Therefore, the participants prepared and presented presentations about their own country and, their culture, immediate environment and school. They got acquainted with the characteristics, traditions, music, literature, celebrations and customs of other partner countries, discovering similarities and differences between cultures and developing tolerance for other cultures. During the course of the project, students and teachers involved in project activities realized that all cultures are equal and none are more valuable than others. Our target group was students aged 10 to 12 years, due to the extension of the project beause of COVID and restrictions related to COVID, we expanded the age group to 10 to 14 years old. We included in the project students who showed an interest in culture, as well as students who are academically weaker, students who come from less educationally stimulating environments, students from socially weak families, and students who come from ethnically and culturally different families, such as the culture of the country in which they live. A Transnational Project Meeting (Romania, January, 2020), one virtual LTT activity (Slovenia, May, 2021) and three physical LTT activities (Hungary, November 2021, Greece, March 2022 and Slovenia, May 2022) were held in the host schools. From March 2020 to September 2021, it was not possible or it was challenging to carry out physical learning and teaching activities. In April 2021, the partners therefore continued to plan activities and reorganized the partner meetings, so that we carried out one virtual activity and planned the rest of the activities at a time when we anticipated fewer restrictions related to COVID. The meetings were organized in accordance with national and school COVID restrictions, the students did not stay with their families, but together with accompanying teachers. Other students, teachers, families, media, etc. were also informed of events at the school. The activities of the Cultural festivals project covered many areas: literature, music, holidays and celebrations, and natural and cultural attractions of the partner countries. The Erasmus teams presented the topics that each learning and teaching activity dealt with, and then they transferred their acquired knowledge to their peers at their schools. Recordings, PPT, polls, quizzes, games, conversation, presentations, questioning, etc. were used as activity methods. The chosen fields enabled the students to learn about their own culture and other cultures, while at the same time developing understanding and tolerance for other cultures and beliefs. During the activities, students also developed creativity and the ability to think critically and solve problems. The students had the opportunity to talk with their peers from other countries and learn about their own prejudices and think about them. Our goal was to break stereotypes, get to know ourselves and each other, and achieve linguistic diversity and intercultural awareness. It was possible for the students to realize that Europe is a continent of open doors, consisting of different countries with their own cultures and traditions, which are connected by a common interest for a more peaceful and safer Europe. The students used a foreign language, English, when talking with their peers from the partner countries, thereby strengthening their competences of expression in a foreign language, and at the same time becoming more confident in communicating in a foreign language, which also made them more motivated to learn a foreign language at school. During the activities, the students also developed ICT skills. As a lasting result, our theme will enable cultural interaction in a holistic way and thus a greater awareness that all cultures are equal and none are more valuable, which will contribute to a more tolerant, safer and more peaceful environment.