By applying for this project we aimed at giving our students with fewer resources the chance to travel to other countries, to live together, to host and to work with young people from other cultures, in a way to foster inclusion and respect towards others. One of our main goals was to make them conscious of such an important economic source in our area as tourism. Learning about the economic and environmental impact which tourism has and getting to know the concept of sustainable and healthy tourism were very important outcomes that we firmly wanted our students to get to know. Fostering among our students the digital competence and the critical and responsible use of new technologies of information and communication were objectives that we were inclined to focus on, with our students. Furthermore, improving the communicative and linguistic competence of our students, especially by using English. was going to be promoted while living abroad in host families. Finally, cultivating the respect to the environment, raising ecological awareness, motivating the students to value our natural surroundings and understand the impact tourism may have on it, were some of the crucial aims of the project.
Our school, the 1st Senior High School of Agios Nikolaos in Crete, Greece consists of 200 students and 28 teachers. The students of the three levels ( aged 15-18 years old ) form ten different classes. The programme that is followed is the one suggested by the Ministry of Education of Greece. All students in the first grade are obliged to attend general education lessons while in the second and third grade the students should decide what studies they want to focus on. Also, a great number of students opts for groups of psychological ,cultural, environmental and historical interest ,voluntarily. Our school welcomes students from different places, many of them from touristic villages . We are, therefore, a backbone center of the area and a focus of culture and tourism. Thus, the implementation of a project like the one that we participated ( KA122-SCH Short-term projects for the mobility of students and staff of School Education, regarding the Sustainability in Tourism) was of primary importance for the benefit of the school community.