Europchef Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europchef

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

The Erasmus + two-year school exchange entitled Europ’Chef has associated the Lycée Jeanne Delanoue in Cholet in France (coordinator) with the Escola Joviat in Manresa in Spain (partner)
Focusing on the catering and hospitality industry, this project brought together 88 students from the catering sections (cooks and waiters) and two teaching teams over two years. The main objective of the program was to bring together students with similar vocational training but different cultures. In our institutions, we firmly believe that openness to each other and knowledge of the culture of the other is one of the pillars of education towards tolerance.
Around this issue, we have set the following intermediate goals:
– to discover different practices, innovative approaches to learning (catering) during the exchange and the days of practice in the respective schools with the creation of the Europ’Chef competition.
– to encourage students to develop their professional knowledge of their own region and the partner region.
– to develop the language skills of the participants through linguistic immersion during physical, foster and virtual exchanges.
– to allow students to broaden their career horizons following partnership and training for greater employability
– to open up to others by developing European citizenship
– for the teachers, to confront and improve our pedagogy through contact with other educational systems.
– to involve teachers in vocational subjects and promote multidisciplinary teaching.

These two years have been punctuated by both face-to-face and distance activities. Through written presentations and videos, students have learned to get to know each other better. They also worked on presentations from their region to be promoted during physical exchanges. Four meetings were held over the two years (in January 2018, April 2018, February 2019 and April 2019). The students were housed in their penpal’s family and worked together during the workshops or the Europ’Chef competition. The competition was then the result of the exchange. Three transnational meetings were also held between project managers, school leaders and teachers participating in the project.

The impacts of the project on the different participants were various. The project allowed:
For students,
– to improve oral communication in Spanish, English and French.
– to have a better knowledge of the region for better employability
– to deepen their gastronomic knowledge: on culinary traditions and professional gestures.
– to expand their CVs with this experience
– to learn to know the other and be attentive to each other’s uniqueness.
For teachers,
– to strengthen their skills for co-animating courses: during the different phases of the project, teachers were led to collaborate in the preparation and the animation of the course sessions
linked with the project.
– to specialize in the gastronomic field to diversify the lessons related to the professions of the catering and hospitality industry and design activities that promote oral communication.
– for language teachers, the project has made it possible to become more open to the professional field of cantering and hospitality professions and to better understand its characteristics.
– to increase the number of teachers who speak a foreign language in a non-linguistic subject
For institutions, the project has enabled:
– to develop openness and cooperation with institutions in other countries.
– to develop internships abroad, including Erasmus Pro
– to develop relationships between students and teachers: the project made students and teachers work closely during the activities and helped them to learn more from each other
– to strengthen the European dimension in the school project and its implementation (development of new European projects such as the students’ mobilities)
At the local and regional level:
Local and regional businesses and institutions (fine-dining restaurants, tourist offices, suppliers) were involved in the project (during company visits and professional interventions). Some of them have contributed to the Europ’Chef competition either through their products, as jury or as partners.

Even before the end of the project, aware of the impact and benefits for the students, we renewed our candidature and changed the project. Our new Erasmus + Conscious Cooking school exchange project or “Local cooking is sustainable cooking” has been selected.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 79150 Eur

Project Coordinator

OGEC Jeanne Delanoue Les 3 provinces & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Joviat