The rationale behind our project was the need to answer to the challenges of globalization: in a world in constant flux, people tend to become alike in their lifestyles; thus loosing their own identity. In fact our teenagers know lots of things about far away countries, but they may not know anything about the traditions of where they live.As a consequence, our project aimed to take culture and heritage out of textbooks and use it to express connections with other countries through languages, traditions and food, discovering what makes us different at the same time. To achieve these objectives, we chose Spanish hosting organizations as neighboring countries around the Mediterranean Sea, with languages and cultures that descend from Latin.As expressed by the the title of the project, we wanted to broaden the concept of European citizenship by examining common roots and focusing both on our similarities and differences. Starting from the green re-evaluation of our culture we wanted to promote knowledge about shared European heritage and diversity, values of inclusion/diversity/tolerance and democratic participation; also improving language learning and language diversity in schools, developing a professional network across Europe.
I.P.S.S.E.O.A. Mediterraneo is a vocational secondary school of Catering and Hospitality Services situated in Pulsano. Its students study general and vocational subjects and at the end of the 5th year they get the “diploma”. School’s learning programs give a great importance to topics like sustainability, climate change, green skills, artistic and cultural heritage treasures and European values that must be preserved for the students and for future generations. All these values have been recalled and reinforced by the Erasmus projects the school has been involved in since 2020, aiming to make students more and more aware and involved in these topics. All the three vocational sectors of our school - cooking, service and hospitality- were involved in the project, addressed to all the school. However students aged between 14-16 were directly involved in the transnational mobilities; most of them come from low-class families that don't support their cultural and social growing up. As a result by participating to Erasmus programs they had the opportunity to know new cultures, broaden their European horizons and overcome any forms of prejudice as well as to improve their foreign language skills and interpersonal skills.