Ready for the World. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Ready for the World.

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Three schools will work together on the topics related to how we can assist and empower people in need for help.
Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri VMA (Akureyri Vocational College) in Iceland, SOSU Randers (Randers Social- and Healthcare (VET) school) Denmark and Morgen College which is a part of the Landstede school group in Harderwiijk Netherlands. VMA will coordinate the project.

Students from an academic social science programme in VMA, students in their preparatory phase for a VET programme in Social assistance from SOSU Randers and younger students in their preparatory VET school in Morgen Coellege will form a diverse group of students from all layers of society. 10 – 15 students from each school will meet in each country.
The main task of the students and their teachers is to look at their own society and present it to the visitors. This involves identifying groups of people in their own society that are in need for assistance and how they can reach for help. They will also look at the concepts of empathy and sympathy and the danger of fixing a guilt by donating money or offering voluntary work. Students are supposed to learn about how it is possible to assist people to empower them and not make them feel inferior. The idea is that when you present your own society to visitors you will learn about your own situation. When you arrive as a guest to another country you will be able to compare your local surroundings to the place you are visiting.

The main goals of the project are to work on concepts related to different situations of people when we can say some of us are in a privileged postition in society. These groups may be identified by economic indicators, language skills in the national language, religion, disabilities or by other means. Those that do not fall into the categories of being in need for assistance may perhaps not be able to identify with them. Empathy means that you can put yourself in someone´s other shoes. Sympathy is something else and perhaps not as likely to be helpful.
Underlying the project is also the notion that if we want to work towards the Sustainable Development Goals issued by the UN we must work together, this is the SDG 17.
Why not work on this in each school without cooperaton and travel? We feel that this is such a fundamental change in thinking about helping people that we need to compare situations in different countries and learn how things are being done in the way of assisting people and involving the public in this.
The three schools have not worked all three together before. VMA and SOSU have a long relationship through student mobilities, Icelandic students in practical nursing doing a part of their workplace training in Randers and Danish students training in Akureyri Home for the elderly. VMA has been working with Morgen College on a strategic partnership project concerned with best practices in the planning and implementing of student training in workplaces. This prior experience and cooperation will benefit the project when we plan and make sure all things are covered on student visits.

We hope this project will both benefit the students involved but also future students in the way that the teachers involved will get additional experience and tools to use in the future when discussing and assigning projects to their students about social responsibility and participation. We hope this will both inflitrate social science and the vocational education and training in care related programmes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137117 Eur

Project Coordinator

Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri & Country: IS

Project Partners

• Randers Social- og Sundhedsskole
• Stichting Christelijk VMBO Harderwijk