BUILDING A NEW EUROPE AGAINST STEREOTYPES Erasmus Project

Project Title

BUILDING A NEW EUROPE AGAINST STEREOTYPES

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: Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

“Building A New Europe Against Stereotypes” was a project based on national/international activities, a regular exchange of information (texts, presentations, videos, pictures) and mobilities of representatives (students, teachers) from the four countries involved: Romania (coordinator), Lithuania, Portugal and Turkey (partners).
Its basic aim was to increase the awareness of the images/prejudices we have about the different cultures and countries involved, of the reasons these stereotypes appear and necessity of change in our attitudes, to become more open-minded concerning the stereotypes and prejudices.
The project was based on the exchange of experiences of students and teachers. We learned about the different cultures and way of living from the countries participating in the project. We started by stating our stereotypes about our partner countries, process, compare/contrast them in the course of the project and fix and document the changes at the end. Consequently, by working on different aspects of stereotypes and using a variety of innovative pedagogical approaches by means of skill-based activities, students learned about different ways of seeing their lives (present and past), understood their own national identities, the diversity of European cultures and languages and, the most important, they were able to get rid of their wrong concepts, prejudices and stereotypes enabling young people to build a more open-minded Europe. In the same time the students and the teachers developed and improved their ICT skills in order to communicate better with other students and teachers from the partner countries.
Regional was another very important aspect of this project: students represented not only their nations but their regions as well: Portugal, Turkey, Romania, and Lithuania, adding to European linguistic and cultural diversity. We used different types of mobilities to learn about the different regions, the different countries, the different school systems, comparing the new ideas with the ones we had before. The experience better enhanced our integration in EU, it promotes democratic values and citizenship, social inclusion and lifelong learning.
The project included 4 schools and 4 countries representing one third of the European Union member states: Colegiul Economic Arad from Romania, Siauliu Sporto Gimnazija from Lithuania, Agrupamento de escolas A Beira Douro-Medas, from Portugal and Carsamba 75.Yil Mesleki ve Tehnik Anadolu Lisesi from Turkey. There were about 76 mobilities of teachers and 64 exchange of students in LEARNING/TEACHING/TRAINING ACTIVITIES in October 2015 and in May 2016 lasting 7 days.
The activities and the subjects approached at each meeting were correlated with the specificity of each host school. The meetings were hold by the teachers. Their role was to organize, to plan the LEARNING/TEACHING/TRAINING ACTIVITIES at the end of every project year for students (C1) (C2) and to search the curriculum, and to do Intellectual Output.
During the first LTTA for students in October 2015 (C1) the sub-topics were “How people live/ How people believe and pray/How people entertain/How people Work/How people educate”” and for the second LTTA for students in May 2016 (C2) the sub-topics were Music, Dances, Sports, Arts, Handicrafts, Theatre, Cinema, Museums, Houses, Clothes, Meals of the Nations“. 64 students participated at these activities.
The transnational meetings were organized in each country involved in the project every project meeting had four steps: Preparation, Meeting, Evaluation and Dissemination.The preparation for the meeting was done by: preparing presentations / A leaflet of daily words and expressions /Travel Manuals. During the project meeting, planned and prepared activities were done by participating of all partner schools. Host schools organized the programme and there were activities on sub-topic, presentations, cultural visits, lesson observations, evaluation meetings and cultural evening. After the meeting there were evaluations of the meeting by filling the evaluation form and dissemination activities in every school; Also a lot of other activities took place after each transnational meeting: photo albums of activities, mini local conferences, articles written in the local press, updating the website, updating the project corner in the school, updating the Digital Monitor.
At the end of the second year there were also other several activities like: applying final questionnaire and evaluation form, producing a calendar with project photos and project products, observing and writing final report of the project, making short films, sport activities, presentations and photos, writing a mini-dictionary of daily words and expressions, making a booklet with photos, a booklet of articles and students’ impressions, doing statistical analysis of the initial and final questionnaires and evaluation forms, publishing a special edition in the local and school newspaper.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 143320 Eur

Project Coordinator

Colegiul Economic Arad & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Siauliu sporto gimnazija
• Agrupamento de Escolas À Beira Douro – Medas
• CARSAMBA 75. YIL MESLEKI VE TEKNIK ANADOLU LISESI