Our project consists of five educational institutions from the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Germany. More than 50 teachers and about 200 students are directly involved in this project. The project will be implemented during two years 2020 - 2022. As partners, we agreed that it is very important to develop the respect of dignity, human rights, culture and religion among young people. The main task of the project activities is to make students and the local societies more aware of the problem of discrimination, violence, aggression and the lack tolerance in our communities. Presently we can see that our world and our way of life is threatened by different developments, for example the attacks on democracy, the destruction of our living conditions and negative aspects of globalisation. We want to analyse the situation in our communities according to these aspects and try to find solutions, methods and strategies to improve the present day conditions. The rise of nationalism, egoism and disrespect of nature is a phenomen we all suffer from. This project ensures that everyone involved realizes that the solution can only lie in multilateralism and not in unilateralism. Moreover, we believe that due to the project it will be much easier to level all the misconceptions and stereotypes. Sharing our experiences, our skills and visions will benefit and promote empowerment at various levels and thus stimulate active participation in social and political life. Other aims are: - to help participants to develop a brighter and international perspective on education - to provide opportunities to gain experience, knowledge and improving approaches to teaching and school management practices - to improve efficiency and effectiveness in developing EU Projects - to enhance and increase school partnerships across the EU and - to enhance the quality and European dimension of teachers training To realize these aims we use different forms of cooperation. Altogether we have six meetings, each one with a special topic: - in Germany "Different ways - one aim" - mutual interchange of learning methods (Short-term joint staff training events) - in the Czech Republic "Family- life's greatest gift" and "Environmental perspective" (Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils) - in Portugal "The importance of being a European citizen since the discoveries" - in Spain “Identity and Community” - in Germany "Young people – working and living in a rural area, political participation of young people" - in Poland "People in need" The meetings will enable students to meet and work on these different topics in international mixed groups, comparing and evaluating their work from the stages between the meetings, learning and practising the language at the same time. To achieve the goals of the project, we decided to focus our activities on sharing opinions, experiences and values. The topics are compatible with students' interests: getting to know each other, understanding the different educational systems, understanding and realizing the common situation, analysing the similar problems we have in our countries. The idea is that we all understand that we have different citizenships but our reality in our different countries is not as different as we might think. Moreover, by working on values like tolerance, solidarity, equality... we will help to make responsible, respectful European citizens, ready to work and travel anywhere in Europe. We will carry on the following activities: students and teachers communication in order to get information, experience and learn; exchange of the good practice, also with local institutions (meetings, exhibitions, show-off lessons, events etc.); creating the digital and educational materials (videos. posters, slideshows, etc.); experiencing different lessons in the partner schools (attending various subjects like PE, geography, maths, music etc); peerlearning – children will teach and instruct each other; and various joint activities. The project is divided into six stages according to the number of the meetings. That does not mean that we focus intirely on meetings, equally important is the work between the meetings. Here the "real" work is done, project work is not only preparing and executing the meetings. During these six stages we will plan, work on and finish tasks like: - creating videos (e.g. language course, introducing the school and town, bullying and discrimination) - making, presenting and analysing surveys (relevance of organic food, importance of environment-friendly measures and agriculture, activities and strategies against climate change, influence of nationalistic parties/groups in our area/country - Reader/booklet (compilation of six stages) In order to give a long term effect to our results, we decided to develop a website, facebook page and start a two-year etwinning project. It gives us the opportunity to reach the wider public and make it stay available for a long time.
As projected our project has consisted of five educational institutions from the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Germany. The number of 50 teachers and about 200 students directly involved in this project has been easily reached. In fact the numbers have been considerably increased. The project was to be implemented during two years 2020 - 2022. Because of the beginning of the pandamic in 2020 we had to reorganize the whole schedule of the project work inbetween meetings and the dates of the meetings themselves. Furthermore it was very complicated because of the different times of lockdowns in the countries. In the first project year there were no face-to-face-meetings possible. In order to start the work we organized several video conferences for students and teachers so that we could get to know each other. We had more online meetings just for teachers because we had to adjust our work plan to the new circumstances. We took the chance to apply for a prolongation of the project for one year. This meant a lot of reorganisation and changes. This included a very close and trusting partnership with the people responsible in all the schools. Headmasters and headmistresses had to be involved, new holiday times in different countries had to be considered, anxiety of parents hosting students had to be overcome. Another big problem occured on October 2022. Inspite of the pandamic we were able to achieve substantial work results that we uploaded in our own twinspace on etwinning. The promised migration to the new platform never took place until now. All the partners made phone calls and wrote emails to the reponsible people in their particular countries but the problem could not be solved. In the end we miss an opportunity to collect and present our common work results. As partners, we agreed as written in the application form that it is very important to develop the respect of dignity, human rights, culture and religion among young people. The main task of the project activities was to make students and the local societies more aware of the problem of discrimination, violence, aggression and the lack of tolerance in our communities. Presently we can see that our world and our way of life is threatened by different developments, for example the attacks on democracy, the destruction of our living conditions and negative aspects of globalisation. We wanted to analyse the situation in our communities according to these aspects and tryed to find solutions, methods and strategies to improve the present day conditions. The rise of nationalism, egoism and disrespect of nature is a phenomen we all suffer from. This project ensured that everyone involved realized that the solution can only lie in multilateralism and not in unilateralism. Moreover, we believed that due to the project it would be much easier to level all the misconceptions and stereotypes. Sharing our experiences, our skills and visions would benefit and promote empowerment at various levels and thus stimulate active participation in social and political life. These preconditions have not changed during the project years. Other aims were: - to help participants to develop a brighter and international perspective on education - to provide opportunities to gain experience, knowledge and improving approaches to teaching and school management practices - to improve efficiency and effectiveness in developing EU Projects - to enhance and increase school partnerships across the EU and - to enhance the quality and European dimension of teachers training To realize these aims we used different forms of cooperation. We had to adjust these because of the changed circumstances due to the pandamic. Altogether we had six meetings, each one with the original topic: Short-term joint staff training events: - in Germany "Different ways - one aim" - mutual interchange of learning methods Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils: - in Germany "Young people – working and living in a rural area, political participation of young people" - in Portugal "The importance of being a European citizen since the discoveries" - in Spain “Identity and Community” - in the Czech Republic "Family- life's greatest gift" and "Environmental perspective" - in Poland "People in need" The order of meetings had to be changed as you can see here. The goals don't have to be mentioned again. The meetings enabled students to meet and work on these different topics in international mixed groups, comparing and evaluating their work from the stages between the meetings, learning and practising the language at the same time. It is clear now that the work inbetween the meetings was substantial to create successful meetings. In the end we can say the difficult and changed circumstances led to more concentration and willingness to make this project successful. I has to be added that the help of the National Agencies was vital for the complition of our project. (30.10.2023)