The concept of immigration is as old as human history. As a term, it is the act of someone who travels to a different country for the purpose of living there permanently. In this process, immigrants or more specifically, refugees have two alternatives: To adapt to the society, or to lead a life away from it. The factors that cause immigration are based on serious reasons such as social, political or economical needs. Especially refugees who are the victims of war migrate to the European countries in order to find a safer and liveable place for their families. As it is known, because of the civil war, economic crisis, poverty, and social chaos in various parts of the world, people have to migrate to other countries or take refuge. For example, more than 22 million people, including legal and illegal immigrants (refugees), reside in different parts of European countries according to data released by Eurostat in 2018 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics). The wave of migration also brings to mind the integration problem resulting from having a different language, culture, and lifestyle. It is inevitable to make the necessary arrangements regarding the integration process of refugees/immigrants and their rights for equal education. Refugee/immigrant family children who are exposed to the new culture and its language other than their native language have difficulty both in taking education and communicating with their peers. In this context, it is important that these children should adapt to the education system and socialize in the school. Among the main objectives of the "European 2020 Strategy", it has been mentioned that priority will be given to the issues of equality and anti-racist approaches in education, training, and youth projects including intercultural dialogue. Accordingly, it is declared that activities aiming at eliminating inequality, combating discrimination, racism, and violence should be added to the curricula and also participation and learning performance of disadvantaged students should be taken into consideration at schools. The main objective of this project is to increase awareness of the school community and other stakeholders towards refugee/immigrant students and make them more active in the education process through activities involving social inclusion. Schools, which have an important role in the integration process of these students, have key roles both in individual learning and socialization of the students. Students who come together in the school environment will have the opportunity to create new ideas and to know each other through activities such as academic studies, projects, and sports activities. In the activities, students are expected to use the collaborative and cooperative learning model which will lead to the development of higher-level thinking, communication, self-management and leadership skills. As stated in the project content, 2 teachers and 5 students from each partner institution will be assigned as participants for each mobility. The students will have a chance to get to know each other with the help of the activities in the mobilities. 6 LTT programs are planned within the scope of the project. In the 1. LTT program, there will be a kickoff meeting, seminars on the perception of minorities, a Web 2.0 tools course, and the introduction of eTwinning project. The 2. LTT program will consist of a workshop on how to build inter-group relationships, selecting the logo of the project, a festival of world cuisines, a folk tales activity and a seminar about the problems of immigrants/refugees. In the 3. LTT program, there will be a debate on history and legends, a quiz show related to the traditions and festivities, the celebration of World Refugee Day and sharing the examples of traditions belonging to different cultures. The 4. LTT program will include activities about traditional children's games, dramas, sports events organized for the social integration of the students. In the 5. LTT program, there will be visiting local settlements where minorities live, doing street interviews, workshops on the features of minorities and debate about multi-layers of identity. In the 6. and the last LTT program, there will be an activity about a multilingual glossary, the celebration of World Day for Cultural Diversity, a folk dance show, and the exhibition traditional costumes. Surveys, the project logo, magazines, the project web site, brochures, pictures, videos and eTwinning documents will be the concrete results of the project. On the online platform, the eTwinning project "Bridging Cultures" will be open to the new partners who will help the project continue in the long term. Erasmus+ corners, the project web site, social media accounts, local press, schools' and local authorities' websites will be used as tools to share the news related to the project activities to reach larger groups of people.
This project related to the integration of refugee/immigrant students has achieved its primary goals of promoting intercultural dialogue, understanding cultural diversity and combating discrimination. Firstly it helped participants to have a more open-minded approach towards immigrants considering the reasons why they left their countries to reach ours. Secondly it urged the members of school and community to do all effort to make feel the safe. Thirdly it helped everyone to consider them a resource not a threat. It has also enabled refugee/immigrant students to be more active in social integration processes, thereby reducing their isolation and increasing their engagement with the school community. Another objective of the project was to develop teachers' skills in teaching and guiding diverse groups of students, including refugees and immigrants. By participating in LTT activities like seminars, workshops, and language courses,teachers were able to gain new insights and techniques for supporting students from different backgrounds. Through immersion in an English-speaking environment, as well as language-focused activities like quizzes and glossary-building, students and teachers were able to improve their English skills. Moreover the project received positive feedback from participants, as evidenced by the 25% increase in satisfaction survey results compared to pre-mobility expectations. The partner schools organized seminars and meeting in order to share the knowledge and experience they have gained in the LTT mobility abroad. In this way, the school staff in each institution has been informed about the project process. Each country had an Erasmus+ project corner, updated with materials so the whole school could follow the project activities on the boards. The learning outcomes obtained during the project process were shared through the project website, social media and local newspaper and this helped to get the attention of a wider public. Meetings were organized to inform local schools and institutions, such as Educational Centres and Town Halls, about the project. Directorates of Education were visited to promote the project and give general information about the LTT activities. The local communities and International Agencies, such as Unicef were invited to the celebration programs of the “World Refugee Day” so that this day has been a real active event with the possibility for future collaboration. There was also a great effort to create a link between the local culture and that of immigrants/refugees, in order to shorten physical and cultural gaps. For istance in the Italian School an artistic panel representing a boat, was considered the starting point for a parallelism between the voyage of immigrants to reach our countries (who face obstacles and dangers before reaching hapiness) and the Dante’s journey through the three kingdom of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. The expectations related to the long term impact and sustainability of this project have not changed, they are even greater, since there are plenty of activities that can be done. The project website will be accessible to the visitors, who are interested in the social inclusion of refugee/immigrant students, for at least five years. It can be a source of ideas and inspiration for future actions, for istance the celebration of the “World Refugee Day” could be celebrated every year at school and in the community uploading all the material on the website. The schools will be able to use the surveys of the project to their students at certain times to evaluate the perception of immigrants in the long term. This evaluation can be done every year, to see how the perception if immigrants/refugees changes and inproves during the time.The project’s objectives related to the integration of immigrants and cultural diversity will also be added to the strategic plans of the schools.The documents like brochures and magazines will be available for use after the conclusion of the project and they could be a starting point to other ventures. For example, every month Refugee/immigrants students could write an article related to a topic of their interest on school e-magazine. This could be a way to listen to their voice. The link related to the project content will be added to the schools’ websites for the use of people who look for detailed information about the project or search ideas for new actions. Project materials such as survey results, reports, documents of LTT activities will be shared in the school magazines to attract the attention to the project. This project eventually helped teachers and students to develop their skills in conducting a transnational project properly and this experience will have a positive effect on the future eTwinning and Erasmus+ projects.