“Healthy Living in Europe” brings together 5 schools from Germany, Greece, Spain, Romania and Turkey. The drive of this project is to guide students to internalise healthy living patterns and enlarge their view about healthy lifestyles within the European community. A healthy lifestyle means eating healthy, practising sports, having a harmonious relation with the natural environment, learning to deal with our own feelings, promoting wellbeing, creating healthy and strong relationships and social support. By this present project we tackle the topic under all the above mentioned above. The project stems from a problem which some schools confront with- more and more pupils refuse the attendance of the PE classes, therefore the number of pupils who are overweight is increasing every year. The participants will benefit from guidance on how to achieve healthy food habits and how important sports or any form of physical exercise is on our mental and psychological comfort. The main objective is to raise awareness about different healthy European lifestyles among 100 students from the 5 schools reunited in the present project for a period of 24 months. In order to achieve the main aim, the following objectives have been set: -to improve participants’ skills and knowledge to have a healthy and balanced diet; -to support participants to lead a healthier lifestyle; -to provide participants opportunities to learn within a multicultural environment; -to encourage the international exchange of good practices. 140 participants is the number intended to be the direct beneficiaries in our project (100 students and 40 teachers). At the level of the partnership, there will be involved about 300 students aged 15-20, 80 teachers and an estimated number of 200 local participants (school staff, parents, representatives of the local authorities, guests, stakeholders, etc.). The working language of the project is English. The designed activities will give the participants the chance to explore together the surrounding nature, the impact of their acts on the environment and how nature impacts people’s health. Sports will be used as a communicating tool for health-related information to students, but also to aid when establishing human relationships and improve teambuilding. By taking part in friendly competitions, team cohesion, goal setting and team spirit will be created and supported. Students will have the occasion of developing friendships during their work within the Erasmus+ projects clubs, international meetings or the online eTwinning project. International exchanges will result in creating role models, finding sources of inspiration, opportunities for personal growth and development. Each partner school will implement topic-related activities developed during the international meetings within the project clubs. The specific context of each school will be taken into consideration while doing these activities. Students will be involved in interactive activities which will develop their ability to sum up information, IT competences and critical thinking, creativity, healthy habits and practical knowledge. Organising activities outdoors will promote students’ relation with the environment. This idea will show students that education also happens in the open. Among the planned activities outdoors are field trips, study visits, meeting guest speakers from different organisations who promote leading a healthy life. While attending the seminar “Reading for Well-being”, students will discover that even literature can enhance personal wellbeing. The result of this project will be that all the participants will enlarge their view of leading a healthy lifestyle in various European communities and the quality of their educational process will also improve. This will be a unique experience in the long-turn because it will create a new ideology about what a healthy life means in terms of eating and being active. The participants will grasp the idea that each individual is responsible for creating his/her own healthy lifestyle. As a result, the project products will be blended into the school curricula and the results will be disseminated during Open Day events of the school, reunions or Educational Fairs. Our cooperation is intended to continue via the online eTwinning platform for at least three years after the completion of the project. The organisation of a health awareness campaign in every partner school or community on 7th April on the occasion of World Health Day is one of the planned activities. The schools will benefit from creating a European dimension, internationalizing the school curricula and teachers’ expansion of their knowledge and ideologies. Thanks to this partnership, participants will enrich their communicative skills, will come into contact with different languages, cultures and lifestyles. The people involved will be more efficient in managing in multicultural environments and they will also develop socially.
Our project theme HEALTHY LIVING IN EUROPE had to be modified twice due to 2 unpredictable events, namely the Corona pandemic and the war in Ukraine, because both factors are of course crucial when considering healthy living and so had to take some space in the project. Initially, all real meetings were stopped and so we worked together only online. Surprisingly, however, not only the online teacher meetings worked well, but also the online student meetings with subsequent private contacts through social media. As a result of these online meetings, all partner schools are now focusing on the corona problem for the time being. Pathways of viral infection, immune processes, and hygiene measures suddenly interested everyone, and the findings about the importance of scientific research were topics of conversation in the various online meetings. In addition, the social consequences and thus indirectly health influencing factors of the corona measures were the focus of discussion. How these social consequences of the various corona regulations presented themselves in the individual countries was the subject of discussion in the 1st real meeting in Spain with the common realization that the students of all countries perceived the problem of sensory deprivation similarly and the lack of social resonance in life robbed everyone of energy, which made the importance of individual salutogenesis clear. It was therefore decided to focus more on salutogenesis and in particular on the importance of music, art, dance and theater for individual resilience at the 4th real project meeting in Duisburg. The HEALTIER LIFESTYLE theme planned for Duisburg remained, but was given a different focus than originally planned. The project meeting in Turkey was not changed thematically, although the experiences in the corona pandemic also changed the focus so that MOTION and EMOTION were reflected more strongly in the relationship context. Empowerment in the group was promoted by team games of all students and common group dances (folk dances to strengthen the national identity and international modern dance). Overall, it became clear what importance self-reflective and common movements, if possible with suitable music, have for health. It was impressive to learn about the importance of wellness and health centers in the nearby ancient EPHESOS. Here we visited together the ASKLEPEION, one of the first ancient wellness and health centers, as well as an ancient high school. In line with the working theme of the project meeting, the students of all countries learned, that in ancient times the formation of a healthy body (etymology of the word gymnasium) was primarily in focus and only then about the acquisition of knowledge. The next project component nutrition could be kept as planned, but also here one could observe factors, which were similarly effective by the Corona pandemic in all 5 countries. There was namely in all countries currently a tendency to alternative forms of nutrition and here the idea of an ethical-religious, ecological and socially motivated turn to a vegetarian or vegan form of nutrition played a major role. In accordance with the current European trend, spiritually motivated forms of nutrition were discussed in a particularly interesting workshop, supported by meditative exercises and yoga. In our project time there was not only the caesura by Corona, but also the war in the Ukraine began and with it the further realization that healthy life presupposes peace. Therefore, at the last meeting in Romania, not only ecological aspects but also the role of peace were intensively considered and discussed. The topic of the ecological footprint was expanded to include an European Peace Run and a World Peace Run, so that in the truest sense of the word the connection between body, mind and politics became clear to all. So at the last meeting the concept PEACE AND UNITY was taken up again in conclusion.