What’s ‘Left’ from Human Rights? – Human Rights in Action! Erasmus Project

Project Title

What’s ‘Left’ from Human Rights? – Human Rights in Action!

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Home and justice affairs (human rights & rule of law)

Project Summary

The main goal of this project was promoting democracy while focussing on human rights. Today we are confronted with a variety of global challenges. Young people are especially concerned with issues like migration, climate change, populism, nationalism or data security. All of these issues are connected with human rights. To tackle these issues, it is important to know about human rights and to know about countries where human rights are infringed because that affects the rest of the world as well. But it is especially important to learn that in countries where human rights are guaranteed by their constitutions, it is still the people who are responsible for watching over the human rights. This can only be done when we deal with the topic ‘human rights’ in schools. Our first meeting in Greece was aimed at children’s rights. In a creative way each group of students presented children’s rights which were especially important to them. Then, all students attended a workshop on child trafficking which was conducted by an NGO. The students realized that child trafficking also happens in Europe and that there are institutions that fight this.Of course, the students also dealt with Thessaloniki’s history and the persecution of the Jews. Since our stay was at the same time the International Film Festival took place in Thessaloniki, the Greek team arranged for our students to watch a film on teenage struggles and there was a discussion on that afterwards.
In preparation for the meeting in Germany, the students also dealt with the past, especially with people or groups of people that fought against injustice, discrimination and persecution.That made the pupils take a closer look at their countries and regions and had them learn about brave actions from local people. In a theater workshop, the students experimented with their power to stand up for their rights, to fight injustice, in short, to practise empowerment. The results of this workshop were shown to the public at a school event where the students celebrated diversity in presenting songs, performances and speeches. All partners whished to visit the European Parliament and the Counil of Europe in Strasbourg.These institutions are very much connected to the topic ‘human rights’. The students could discuss topics like climate change, mobility and sustainability with Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg (MEP). A tour through the European Council made us realize how far we have come in terms of human rights in Europe but also how difficult it is to dealt with countries that don’t respect human rights. When in Stuttgart, the group visited an exhibition on degenerate art and made a tour on the deportation of the Jews in Stuttgart. Our plans for our next meetings in Spain, Poland and Italy were to deal with the following topics: idols young people have because of their dedication to human rights; how do young people experience violations to their human rights like discrimination, racism, bullying or sexual abuse. Which coping-strategies are taught at school and what places are there to go to get help. Planned was an exchange of best practice and a handbook. Finding out about human rights in the context of media, art, culture and technics was planned for one of these meetings as well. Since we were not able to travel and meet, we decided to work on these topics online in mixed teams. Some of the results were uploaded on our twinspace, e.g. comics that deal with women’s rights. However, it was not easy to only cooperate virtually. Not only did we have technical problems or issues that had to do with making appointments or sticking to deadlines but it was also hard to keep up our motivation. Even though we couldn’t do three out of five meetings, we still tried to meet our goals and to document as many activities as possible on our Twinspace.

Project Website

http://twinspace.etwinning.net/98983/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 81864 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Renningen & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ITXAROPENA IKASTOLA S. COOPERATIBA
• IIS GOBETTI MARCHESINI-CASALE – ARDUINO
• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace Mistrzostwa Sportowego Szkola Mistrzow KOKORO Centrum Przygotowan Olimpijskich
• 1st GENIKO LYKEIO OF AMPELOKIPI, THESSALONIKI