LEAD – Learning, Experiencing and Awareness of the Diversity. Erasmus Project

Project Title

LEAD – Learning, Experiencing and Awareness of the Diversity.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The project “LEAD- Learning, Experiencing, and Awareness of the Diversity” emerged in the contemporary socio-political situation across the globe. The great migrants’ crisis that struck the world has affected all European countries. Being aware that we weren’t able to change the situation, we decided to change the environment.
The project ” LEAD” aimed at conveying a positive image of people with various backgrounds. It empowered them to see the diversity as an asset, and migrants’ crisis as an opportunity. Contact with other cultures opened eyes, minds, and hearts. The project aimed at broadening the students’ horizons and providing a future perspective through cooperation, and thus facilitating labor market integration. EU citizenship and the fundamental values of the EU: respect for diversity, intercultural dialogue, tolerance, and social inclusion are the fundamental objectives of our project. We considered one of the aims of this project the active citizenship through peer leadership.
The participants were teachers and students from four schools in Poland, Spain, Italy, and Bulgaria. Two of the schools were general educational, and two were vocational. The project included a large number of students,15-19 years old, of each school that comes from various backgrounds. Two of the schools were general educational, and two were vocational. We believed that schools had a key role in supporting integration, preventing discrimination, and promoting tolerance and respect. The teachers were chosen from those who were open-minded and aware of the needed changes in their students. They invested in the inter-cultural and social skills of their students that they needed to cope with diversity. The teachers were responsible for involving students in various activities, boosting their key competencies to deal with their prejudices.
The project LEAD aimed at using various learning methods. These were experienced creating skills to deal with xenophobia and prejudices against the different. It’s of great importance today to pay attention to our students’ social inclusion because of the contemporary situation with the refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants. Tolerance and social inclusion were the basic objectives of our project.
We hope that during the project, we improved the awareness of diversity and the 21st-century competencies of all participants – taking part in the project, and thus reducing disparities.
The activities used to be diverse and focused on creating “hard” skills like digital and foreign language competences; photographic abilities; knowledge of the diversity and healthy living, and use them as a means enhancing “soft” skills like self-esteem, responsibility, active citizenship, problem-solving, creativity, initiative etc. through diversity issues.
The project focused on how to organize web education in a proper useful and creative way. This activity had been realized by the application and exchange of good teaching practices among the partnering schools. We considered it a good approach if we had increased our students’ awareness of healthy living. We did this by a lot of activities due to nature, food styles, sports, etc. We also saw this project as an alternative objective to engage students in extra-curriculum activities that would keep them away from certain negative influences. This activity also had lead to the reducing of disparities.
Teachers had applied many strategies by using different approaches and resources. They engaged and included individuals and groups during formal and informal education: such as Motivational approach; Involving classmates (cooperative learning, peer- tutoring); flipped classroom method; the method of lateral thinking called the “Six hats”; the “Factory of learning”; project-based learning approach; teaching through workshops based on problem solving, learning ability to cope with possible difficulties; forum – theatre method; world café approach; the story-telling approach. There were shown many lessons throughout the visits and in between. We used the ” Atlas of prejudices ” and especially “Tearing Europe apart ” to make students realize what were the prejudices for the European peoples and how the students assessed them. Throughout the project, students carried out research work. The project teams searched and published interesting information like publications, Internet sites which they used in their learning practices. Throughout the project, there had been experienced teamwork by the Internet to create a Picture Dictionary. It included terms related to the objectives of the project. In all the exchanges were organized cultural evenings that aimed to present the traditions of the visited countries. Thus the participants understood the features in common and the diversity of every nation. We considered an innovative approach to celebrating the holidays. They were linked with the project’s objectives at all the partnering schools like for example, the

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 90285 Eur

Project Coordinator

English Language Secondary School “Geo Milev” & Country: BG

Project Partners

• I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im.Organizacji Narodow Zjednoczonych w Bilgoraju
• IES MELENDEZ VALDES
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “G.A. Pischedda”