Bridges to the future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Bridges to the future

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Context/background of the project:
The main idea was that all European countries encounter similar problems and challenges in the fields of youth criminality, safety, integration, early school leavers and consequently a high number of youth unemployment. For all these items, countries try to find solutions that are suitable for the national needs, whilst most of these problems could probably better be solved in a common, European way. Within the project, bridges have been build between people to get to a common, European solution. This explained the title: B2F (Bridges to the future), which was aimed at young people in different countries, building bridges and working out “best practice” solutions to meet the described challenges.

Objectives of the project:
The emphasis concentrated on three items that are of great importance for youngster:
– School drop-outs – perspectives and challenges: How to prevent young people for leaving school without finishing their education and support young teenagers to find a suitable job and create opportunities to strengthen their employability chances ?
– Social inclusion: How to ensure that people with different social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds can live and work together in a peaceful way? Next to that: how can one help our fellow Europeans in meeting the challenges of growing numbers of refugees and immigrants?
– Juvenile delinquency: What are the reasons for youngsters to drift into criminality and what can be done to prevent criminality among them, inside and outside school ?

Number and profile of participants:
About 250 teenagers directly participated in the project. Many of these teenagers represented different groups like immigrants, refugees, apprenticeship seekers or social minorities. But as the project mainly aimed at identifying teenagers for problems outside of school, each teenager was indirectly addressed by the project. To reach a maximum of them, video clips and other information were published via social networks and Internet. Furthermore, organizations like employment offices, social care workers, police, advice centres for refugees or other social minorities, local/regional/national authorities as well as other stakeholders were asked to disseminate the campaign throughout their distribution channels. The number of teenagers thereby combined students of partner schools, friends on social networks and teenagers in contact with the different stakeholders.

Description of activities and methodology used:
The students investigated the current situation regarding the three fields indicated (one per project year) to gain a sound background knowledge. Therefore, they did not only do research on Internet, but also visited and interviewed stakeholders like local prison institutions, social care workers, unemployment agencies, political authorities, etc. During students’ conferences, students presented their results of the national investigations, discussed ways and possibilities to solve these matters and tried to come to common European solutions by developing best practice examples to use afterwards in their own schools as well as in other schools and/or institutions concerned by the treated subjects. The students also developed a campaign, consisting of animated video clips, flyers, posters, theater performances, etc. Posters and flyers were mostly equipped with a QR-code which automatically links to the Website, which contains many facts and figures and all sort of documents developed by students. Furthermore, a “B2F-Day” took place at each school once a year to inform teenagers and stakeholders about the outcomes of the full meetings. Finally, the cooperation of students in an international team was essential, as they needed the different background experiences and knowledge to be able to develop an appealing campaign and best practice advice.

Results and impact:
As the students have got aware of the problems and challenges treated during the project years, its reasons and consequences, activities were planned in order to multiply this awareness to other teenagers. The produced results were used on a B2F-Day, on which students presented their investigations and tried to catch the attention of fellow students as well as other teenagers. Furthermore, all the results were published on Internet and given to the stakeholders for display. Thereby it has been tried to identify teenagers for problems they might face in their future and to show them ways to handle these problems.

Long term benefits:
An e-book with background knowledge has been published on Internet and will thereby be visible and available for the following generations of youngsters. This e-book and all other documentation elaborated by the students can be looked up on the Website of the project www.b2future.net. The results of the project will serve as a basis for the development of a new European project called “Let’s teach Europe” which will continue the work started with “B2F”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 158705 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée du Nord Wiltz & Country: LU

Project Partners

• Berufskolleg Halle (Westf.)
• Montessori High School
• Redruth School
• IISS T.Fazello