comMUNity Erasmus Project

Project Title

comMUNity

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Schools shouldn’t be seen as institutions that practise certain information and skills to students in a closed area. Schools must play an important role in helping young people to develop and manage their physical and emotional well-being for their future career and to live and work with others in different ares. Schools must provide young people the right knowledge, skills and attitudes. With our Project European youths will gain cultural awareness, active citizenship and personal development.

Teaching students to be good democratic citizens, providing students the analytical and critical thinking skills, teamwork, leadership, developing language skills, public speaking and teaching democracy are the reasons why we would like to initiate this Project. To acquire these skills to future generations we will use Model UN Conferences and debating as our basic mediums.

There are many reasons why we would like to use MUN conferences and debates. First of all, it is a fun way of learning about the world. In this era of globalization, being globally aware is more important than ever. When students debate or do MUN, they improve their performances.
The aim of the project is to bring students to social life as young people who have high self-confidence, have ability of public speaking, can express their thoughts freely and are sensitive to their environment and society. We aim to ensure that young people with high level of awareness will be able to discuss local or global issues in a tolerant, polite, formal manner within the framework of their own world views. With the comMUNity project, we aim to develop awareness of European citizenship.

In our previous project be interesTED we noticed that students were not well informed about global topics such as citizenship,democracy or current issues.Turkey as a coordinator has been organizing ATAMUN conferences for 3 years.In order to work on the topic comprehensively, Turkey wanted to work with Latvia,Czech Republic and Italy and project meetings were used as the preparation phase for a new project.

Partner schools, who are 13-18 years old and speak English in a good level. Nearly 500 students from five partner schools will actively involve the activities of the project and 120 students will attend the project meeting. They will especially be chosen students from socially and economically disadvantages backgrounds.Participant teachers will be language, litarature and history teachers.In total there will be 5 LLP and 1 TPM. The students and teacher of the coordinator school are experienced in the project related activities. Other partner schools have also extracurriculum activities about citizenship, debate and public speaking. The partners started this project on etwinning and would like continue as Erasmus+ Project to improve these skills using MUN as a medium.

During the first meeting in Turkey, workshops for teachers and students will be impletemented to teach and give idea about the project related activities which will be held the following two years. In the Project there will be 5 mobilities. In the first year there will be preparation activities such as workshops, debate games, trashtag challenge, Hyde Park speech corner. In the second year implementation stage will start and student will be able to organize debate competitions, MUN conferences.

In order to achieve the targeted objectives, we listed the activities, as it is detailed in Acitivity Chart, from the simple and entertaining ones to the more difficult and academic ones in the 2-year project. In the first year of the project, we planned an activity for each of the topics such as public speaking, discussion skills, environmental awareness and democracy awareness. In the second year, we will organize comprehensive activities in which these skills can be used together. All partners will use eTwinning platform, social media accounts, local and national newspapers for dissemination of the Project. So that, our methodology (from basic to complex) will be shared with society.

The potential long term benefits are not just for the participants actively involved in project, but also other groups will be insprired. Through this project young people will have the opportunity to challenge their opinions along with the opinions and beliefs of others in a safe and educational environment, to think more critically and later to use these to create change for the good and what young people need as leaders of future. This project will teach lots of valuable skills such as logic, awareness, self conference, understanding of democracy and most importantly young people will realise that their opinions and ideas have a place in the world.

Almost all the youth in Europe use social media and recently we have seen many good practices like trashtag challenge and Greta Thundberg, 15. She is also nominated for nobel peace award They inspired young people. We expect that our project will also inspire young people.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129799 Eur

Project Coordinator

Atakum Anadolu Imam Hatip Lisesi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im.Mikolaja Kopernika w Ilzy
• KATOLICKE GYMNAZIUM TREBIC
• Jelgavas Valsts gimnazija
• Istituto di istruzione Superiore “Curie Sraffa”