International focus on global challenges Erasmus Project

Project Title

International focus on global challenges

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: Integration of refugees; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The two schools, Sint-Aloysiuscollege Menen and Ringsaker upper secondary, share two of main priorities: international cooperation and raising awareness on global challenges. In this project we can meet both these goals. We have seen in both schools that even though global challenges are something most students are aware of, they tend not to be too concerned about them. It seems like they need to reflect more over their own actions and how all the people in the world can make a difference on an individual level.

Sint-Aloysiuscollege Menen is a secondary school offering general studies to 800 students aged between 12 and 18 years old and 90 staff members. The school is situated in Menen, a city with a lot of families with a migration background and with more families than average (in Belgium) living in deprivation.
Ringsaker upper secondary school is situated in Innlandet county and offers general studies and various vocational studies: Building and construction, Electricity and electronics, Health and social care, Service and transport, Technical and industrial production. Hence, it is a quite large school with approximately 750 students and 150 employees. Innlandet county is traditionally a farming county, and the level of education has been low. This is now improving and we have more students taking a higher education, but we still feel the need to enlighten our students of the possibilities they have worldwide. Doing international projects is a way to achieve this enlightment.

The main topic for our project was global challenges and we both worked on the students’ awareness of these issues and have also tried to prepare them for future work in combating the different challenges on both a personal and professional level. We have performed activities during the project weeks in which we offered a range of workshops that not only increased the global awareness of the students but let them experience the possible dangers and consequences of some major global challenges (e.g. poverty, climate change, refugee crisis). Our main objective was to make the students feel the consequences of global challenges through different simulation activities (e.g. roleplays.). We believe that they learn more if they have to live the various situations many people face due to global challenges by putting themselves in their places.

The results we aimed for was a greater awareness on the topic, not just among the participating students, but their fellow students and our local communities as a whole. We wanted to measure this by giving both the participating students and their fellow students from the same years a survey prior to the project start, and a follow up survey at the very end of the project. We did see greater awareness of these issues among the students in the final survey, and we have also seen that the students have become more aware of our common responsability of combating global challenges as we all faced one at the finals of our project, the Covid-19.

The potential longer term benefits from this project is that the students have a greater understanding of themselves being European citizens and that we all have to cooperate in order to do something with the global challenges we are facing today. We see that this project has made the students feel a greater connection to Europe by becoming friends with students from another European school. It has helped them see that all though we have some differences in how the countries deal with the global challenges, we all share a common idea and belief.

Our main means of dissemination of the project are through the schools’ web sites and facebook sites and the local media, together with presentations done by the students to fellow students, teachers to fellow teachers and in regional teacher reunions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 64802 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ringsaker videregående skole & Country: NO

Project Partners

• Sint-Aloysiuscollege Menen