Home Sweet Home Erasmus Project

Project Title

Home Sweet Home

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Our school partnership Erasmus+ project entitled “Home Sweet Home” took place from September 2014 to August 2017 and was developed by five secondary schools situated in England, Spain, France, Greece and Turkey which felt the necessity to open to other schools especially because of their situation enclosed as they were in the rural world or geographically far away from other places. Starting from this analysis and having built relationships during a Comenius preparatory visit, the five schools had chosen the topic of housing that they expanded all along these three years on five directions that allowed them to discover their European neighbours but also to discover themselves. In other words, they applied Socrates “Know thyself” before discovering others.
Thus, the project started with a Transnational Meeting at Collège Calmette et Guérin in France in November 2014, during which two teachers from each school worked on the organization of the project under the aegis of the French coordinator. During this meeting the logo of the Home Sweet Home project was chosen among 25 students’ propositions.
The topic of the first part, “My House, My Culture”, allowed all pupils to exchange information about where they lived before the ambassadors selected in each school met at Heathfield School, in Wolverley, the partner school in England for a week of common activities in April 2015, while a poetry competition highlighted the qualities of the ideal house.
The second part, “Houses of the Past” explored the architectural heritage of every country but also the idiomatic expressions related to housing while the ambassadors gathered, in October 2015, in Ysufça Sehit Irfan Okulu in Kandira, the partner school in Turkey, during which the winners of the newspaper article competition were rewarded for their articles on a special event that happened in an old house of their neigbourhood.
The third part, dedicated to “Houses of Famous People” was the opportunity to exchange on the famous artists in each region before the music school of Volos welcomed the ambassadors in April 2016 and gave a reward to the winners of the touristic brochure competition.
The fourth part enabled to develop the topic of “Original Houses”. After studying various influences, such as the habitat of animals, the students were able to identify different original architecture projects and embarked on innovative creations during a competition where they designed a new house. All the ambassadors met at Colegio Santo Domingo in A Coruña in October 2016, the partner school in Spain.
Finally, the fifth part entitled ” Houses of the Future”, while it made an assessment of the protection of the environment in the five partner schools students’homes, gave the opportunity to develop future houses where ecology and home automation would be more important. A comic strip competition, “My House of the Future” was rewarded during the mobility in France in April 2017.
Other activities were inserted around this structure of the project like videos, collaborative works, exhibitions…all aiming at exchanges between the partner schools students.
As the outcome of this project, it is right to say that most of the students of the five partner schools benefited from these actions to open up to Europe either in taking part in a mobility as an ambassador of their school, or in welcoming an ambassador, or even during the different pedagogical activities inherent to the Home Sweet Home project. It is also true that for most of them and their families, the word “Europe” really started to have a meaning. Henceforth, the expression “Home Sweet Home” does not only apply to their home but to the whole Europe !

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 160290 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Calmette et Guérin & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Santo Domingo
• Music School of Volos
• Heathfield School
• Yusufca Sehit Irfan Yaman Orta Okulu