Back2Roots Erasmus Project

Project Title

Back2Roots

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Croats as indigenous minority communities today live in 12 European countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Italy, Kosovo, Hungary, Northern Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia. Affected of various historical, political and economic reasons, from the 15th century began to emigrate from then Croatian territories to other European territories, which are today located in the mentioned 12 countries, while some of them are immigrated to them at the same time as to the territory of today’s Republic of Croatia.

By participating in this project, we want to empower the young Croatian community – the primary students schools in the countries of origin and preserve their culture and encourage them to do the same. We want to act to preserve the Croatian dialects that are in extinction which are contributing significantly to the diversity of the Croatian language.

We believe it is of the utmost importance and in line with European values to preserve the heritage as well intangible and tangible cultural heritage, and one way of preserving them is definitely to transfer cultural characteristics, meanings and values to the younger generations. If we convey to our students love and care for the heritage of their homeland, as well as for the heritage of parts of the Croatian people who, as national minorities, live in other European countries and teach them to appreciate diversity, we will make them preservers of heritage as well as creators of new heritage.

Leading ourselves with all of the above, we came up with the idea for this project in collaboration with a Croatian professor in Italy, at Acquaviva Collecroce (Kruè) at Scuola Elementare School Nicola Neri (Istituto Comprensivo Amodio Ricciardi). The professor is on an exchange to teach classes to the Croatian language minority. During the interview we realized that the language and customs of Molise Croats are quite different from the languages and customs of Croats in Croatia.

The project involves four partners, schools that provide Croatian language lessons for members of minorities from Italy, Serbia, Austria and the project coordinator is from Croatia.

The goals of our project are: to stimulate learning about cultural heritage, to contribute to strengthening the linguistic competences of young generations of members of the Croatian national minority, to contribute to the construction and strengthening of national identity among students of the Croatian national minority living in the Republic of Croatia, to contribute to the understanding of differences in cultural identities and heritage of members of the Croatian national minority and linguistic minorities outside the Republic of Croatia, encouraging creativity and literature of pupils and teachers, cooperation with partners from other countries and regions, thus opening the door to school and acting in a European environment, encouraging active involvement of our school students in activities beyond compulsory teaching, creating EU value citizenship, learning about cultures different about ours, encouraging diversity and its acceptance as well as acquiring transversal competences for our students in an international environment.

The project will have 4 different learning activities that will involve both students and professors.

Through activity called “Once Upon a Time in Our Area”, project participants will become familiar with playing traditional games for children, that is, those games our old ones played outdoors in a time when technology was not yet occupying our lives. The language workshop will serve as a preparation for the development of a distinctive vocabulary that we plan to create in the project, and through a lecture on Glagolitic script and a workshop on drafting a Glagolitic script student will get to know the rich Glagolitic heritage.

Through an activity called “The Sound of Music” students will learn traditional tunes from Molise Croats, contributing to an understanding of the rich heritage of members of the Croatian national and linguistic minority outside the Republic of Croatia, and through the language workshop they will be introduced to phonological, phonetic, morphological and syntax features of old Croatian dialect and will learn a few words.

Activities called “How we used to play” also envisage learning traditional games and dancing traditional dances, making traditional toys, and collecting recipes for making traditional dishes.

An activity called “I’ wanna dance” provides two workshops. In a music-drama workshop, students will rehearse Croatian mini-musical (playing, singing, dancing, acting) through learning old Croatian folk songs. In a language workshop, students will be introduced to the different language features of the three neighborhood villages and will collect the words needed to create a multilingual dictionary.

Project Website

http://os-bakar.skole.hr/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 112680 Eur

Project Coordinator

Osnovna škola Bakar & Country: HR

Project Partners

• Istituto Comprensivo Amodio Ricciardi
• OŠ Ivan Milutinović
• Neue Musikmittelschule Großpetersdorf mit kroatischem Schwerpunkt