European Patterns: Migration of birds and people Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Patterns: Migration of birds and people

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Integration of refugees; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Six years after the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe it has become too quiet in the public. However, this topic remains as important as it had been when we started the project in 2018. Our goal was to make our students and teachers aware of the complexity of factors that lead to migration.
At the same time climate change and education for sustainable development has become more and more important in our partners’ school systems.
Visualizing the parallel between people’s and birds’ migration supported us to help pupils understand the migration principle, reasons that lead to this phenomenon and to emphasize that migration brings about two kinds of effects: positive and negative. During the course of this 36 month project we gained valuable insight during the mobilities and the local activities. Sometimes biodiversity and ornithological aspects where in focus, sometimes we looked closely on human migration. We linked these two different aspects and compared them to each other. We found out that in most cases, very complex decision-making takes place when people leave their homes and families. While birds mainly do what they do instinctively.
This project helped the pupils to develop citizenship skills. The project also had an impact on parents and the population of the cities of the different partners. Six partners from secondary education, local authorities, science museums, departments of universities were involved in this partnership which impacted more than 1400 people and achieved different products. Losing one partner in the beginning of the project and the pandemic hitting this project after 12 month, we were not able to finish the planned five products. However, we achieved some great results which are published on our TwinSpace. We created more local products than planned and the projects’ results are more in depth and more beautiful than we had expected.
One of our precuts is a calendar in which migratory birds illustrating the migration phenomenon. We added students’ quotes from poetry and prose to this calendar to show the link between birds and human thoughts.
The second product is an e-magazine/digital book with poems, essays and true stories about migration from each school partner, written by the pupils.
The project also included a training program for the pupils, mostly through four teaching and training mobilities. These activities gave more than 80 pupils the opportunity to participate in the project activities abroad. Each training activity included seminars, workshops and visits. The pupils met experts and discussed different topic in round table discussions. The pupils will also discovered new cultures, new methods and had lots of enriching personal experiences.
With our local and international activities and the struggles of the pandemic, we did our best to promote a sense of awareness that ecosystems are very fragile and that we should look at the individuals migrating since everyone has unique reasons to migrate. A lot of methods and problem-solving led to valuable insights for all students and teachers and certainly improved their way of working.
The project involved about 70 teachers of different topics. The coordinators stayed in contact through different channels and spread the work of there follow colleagues. About 45 teachers participated in the six European meetings. The UK LTT had to be done as a virtual mobility. The Croatian mobility took place as a hybrid mobility.
This project had various impacts.
Concerning pupils, teachers and the populations, the project improved the image of the actions of the European Union in terms of social inclusion of migrants, providing equal rights to ethnic minorities and biodiversity conservation. It gave access to a lot of cultures of the partner nations.
It also improved international cooperation by allowing moments of educational talks between teachers.
The partners are determined to continue their collaboration after the end of the strategic partnership.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/70484

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 114043,3 Eur

Project Coordinator

Wilhelm-Kaisen-Oberschule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Srednja skola Metkovic
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 3 im. gen. Mariusza Zaruskiego w Ustce
• academy at shotton hall
• Konak Kahramanlar Mustafa Ogutveren Ortaokulu
• Palatul Copiilor