Bullying, hate speech, and discrimination in various fields are still common in some schools, although the community makes high demands on schools and the existing legislation has been improved with updated new legislation created to secure student well-being. Because of this growing trend, schools need to develop prevention plans to address problems such as mobbing actions. It is necessary to focus on a fair and indistinguishable treatment plan. Thus, schools try to develop preventive measures that they can implement and students' views on the subject are taken into account. We hope that our efforts to prevent bullying will be an integral part of our school policy. Therefore, we believe this is possible thanks to the knowledge and experience gained in this project. We aim to partner with the local municipality and other stakeholders who can support school leaders in this regard. The partner schools in the project are interested in investing in time, knowledge and human resources to deal with violence, bullying, and hate speech in school settings. The project will provide a range of opportunities to share training practices, teach experiences, analyze our prevention plans, and to what extent the authorities are involved in this prevention process. Throughout the two project years, schools plan to organize five LTTAs hosted by each partner institution, so we get a first-hand experience of the current situation in each school. Our main project goal is to enable young people to recognize discrimination in their daily lives and to reveal the causes that result in exclusionary thoughts and actions. Participants belong to different countries and cultures and approach these issues from different perspectives. They go out of their daily lives and familiar school settings: whether as a guest or host, they will work on a common subject and overcome linguistic barriers through English. In this unique learning environment that we want to provide thanks to this Erasmus + project, students learn the nature of prejudices, the obvious nature of privileges, the consequences of unfair treatment and how to question hate speech. LTTA activities will mostly be organized by host schools and the student will work in multicultural groups. These cooperation activities are expected to increase team spirit, communication and interpersonal skills, presentation skills, and group harmony. Titles for LTTAs: C1 - Dealing with violence and discrimination problems in schools - comparative study C2 - Stereotypical thinking at work C3 - Strategies to address and prevent violence C4 - Movement against bullying and hate speech (Re) C5 - Promoting Equality We aim to involve at least 100 teachers in the project activities. Members of the project teams will be assigned to approximately 30 teachers who have special tasks such as implementation, dissemination, monitoring, evaluation, communication, and budget management. Students will be the main actors and beneficiaries of the four LTTAs. It will be selected from the total number of students in partner schools. Participants aged 15-18 who fit into these categories. In addition, students outside this target group can apply to join LTTAs. The selection method covers the selection criteria, the content of the student portfolio to be given to the selection committee, the parents' consent to participate in the stock exchanges, etc. Partners share equal duties and responsibilities which have been distributed considering the institutional capacity to fulfill them. Project implementation, dissemination, monitoring, evaluation and creation of results will be the responsibility of project team members in each school. They will comply with these aspects at local level, following the guidelines specified by the European coordinator. Therefore, the coordinator’s duty is to foster coherence in the management of the project. Model documents will be created and distributed for the partners to follow: dissemination and monitoring plans, implementation timeline, evaluation plan. Each school will be assigned extra tasks, so that the workload will be balanced. Taking part in this Erasmus + project will provide various benefits for our partner institutions. First, we will reduce the number of violent incidents among students, following project activities that focus on project issues that increase awareness and create a positive emotional impact on participants. Dissemination activities will be organized in a way to reach large masses, and we expect the impact of these activities on their behavior and attitudes to be increased and transferred from the participants to other categories of students. Second, teachers will develop pedagogical approaches to project issues on local issues and will be able to implement new initiatives in collaboration with stakeholders. For the partner institutions in the project, this Erasmus + opportunity will serve as a tool to strengthen cooperation with other European schools.
While implementing the project, we were suffering from various handicaps during that period of time staring the project in 09/2020 till the end on 31st of August. The first severe handicap was Covid-19, the second the combined loss of our Romanian partner school in Bucharest. The third severe handicap was the enormous earthquake affected Karamanmaras, the city of our partner school, which has been severely hit. Therefore we have to change many things. The sequence of our mobilities has to be changed, and our last mobility couldn't go to Karamanmaras of course. We were glad to have met our Turkish partners who were able to organize a mobility at all. And we decided to meet in Istanbul. Disadvantage was that we haven't got a school around us, but only a hotel. And of course we missed the Turkish students anyway - our partners in Maras fulfilled every mobility so that they couldn't afford more trips even within their own country. On the other hand we as the German school organized a huge fundraising collecting money for our Turkish friends, being affected severely. The changed plans of mobilities: Portugal hosted the first LTTA and was in charge of editing films created in each LTTA, design the project magazine. The German school (Coordinator) hosted the second project LTTA and was in charge of the calendar of the project, preparing monitoring and dissemination tools. Italy hosted the third LTTA. Portugal took over the responsibility to disseminate the project through Google forms. The project Twinspace was created and updated, teachers and students were added as members in the portal to give it a more dynamic dimension. The German school made arrangements for 36 monthly partner conferences on MS Teams, in which partners will discuss issues related to the first year calendar of activities, action plans for the second year (conference 1), project results, impact and sustainability (conference 2). Türkiye hosted the fourth LTTA, Portugal designed the project website. Every country collected all the project materials (they will be included on the website and the twinspace about bullying, hate speech, violence and discrimination) and sent it to Portugal (Laurentina Soares, who will collect the material). Expected results of every meeting: 1st Meeting in Portugal: The expected concrete results consisted of the following: a first questionnaire to be implemented in schools, a comparative review of the current situation in partner schools on three topics of the project , LTTA minutes and report, the documents and the presentations that used in workshops, the evaluation documents, certificates participation. 2nd Meeting in Germany: Expected concrete results: photo stories designed by students, a comparative review of the current situation in partner schools on three project topics, LTTA minutes and reports, documents and presentations used in workshops, assessment documents, participation certificates. 3rd Meeting in Italy: The expected concrete results included: Photographs taken by the students during the cooking workshop, LTTA minutes and reports, documents and presentations used in the workshops, evaluation documents, participation certificates. 4th Meeting in Türkiye: Expected concrete results: photographs taken during the events, LTTA minutes and reports, short play prepared by Italian students, documents and presentations used in workshops, evaluation documents, participation certificates. 5th Meeting in Romania: Expected concrete results; photographs taken during the events, LTTA minutes and reports, case studies prepared by Portuguese students, documents and presentations used in workshops, evaluation documents, participation certificates. The last meeting didn't take place due to covid-19. The Bucharest school unfortunately left school already in 2021. Therefore we have to change plans. We tried to fulfill the tasks during the trip to Istanbul, which was not easy because of the earthquake in Karamanmaras. So we decided to fulfill the tasks in our home countries.