ARMONÍA – HARMONY. “Building Spaces for Inclusive Dialogue, for Participation and Creation” Erasmus Project

Project Title

ARMONÍA – HARMONY. “Building Spaces for Inclusive Dialogue, for Participation and Creation”

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Social dialogue; Romas and/or other minorities

Project Summary

HARMONY. “Building Spaces for Inclusive Dialogue, Participation and Creation” is a project promoting participation that developed across six European educational centers for Early Childhood and Primary Education, where migrant students from mixed cultures and placed converge.

⇒ Diagnosis:
Detecting intercultural conflicts caused by the rejection of the “different or other” based on xenophobic or racial attitudes, segregation by religion, language, culture, sex, etc.

⇒ Objectives:
Having based our objectives on the educational center’s needs, we were able to “transform reality” within them. The aim of these actions has been to increase participation and empathy towards diversity, to exchange strategies and methodologies and to acknowledge that, “differences enrich us and bring us together rather than separate us.”

⇒ Activities:
– Cohesion: logo, slogan, posters, exhibitions, videos, language workshop, etc.
– Creative Project “Art and inclusive dialogue”, used to express ideas, thoughts and feelings.
– Dynamics of Philosophy for children, used to improve the management of emotional processes for conflict solving.
– Develop joint actions between students and citizenship, to acquire new relationship and social dialogue skills.

⇒ Methodology
The methodology used during this project has enabled the fusion of Art as a “cultural expression of social dialogue”. We started from “deconstructing the ways to relate in the classroom”, and then re-established the “Social Construction” (respect for the different). In addition, proposing innovative solutions towards educational centers and society in general.

⇒ Results. Some of the results achieved throughout two academic years:
– Manage to create harmony within a culturally diverse classroom, by combining ideas and thoughts of the coexisting different cultures.
– Promotion of empathy and social skills in order to guarantee tolerance and social inclusion.
– Management of positive channels of “verbal communication” (assemblies, gatherings …) and “nonverbal (dramatization, plastic works …), favoring cohesion and understanding.
– Development of tools and spaces for educational intervention aimed to fight against Social Exclusion.
– Promote a change in discriminatory behaviors, towards people with different qualities and characteristics, appearance, physical, sexual features, etc.
– Create alternatives towards educational coaching. Including teamwork, conflict management, emotional intelligence, etc.
– Contribute to the development of a European Space with a multicultural approach.
– Promote a responsible and socially appropriate use of social networks from an early age.
– To promote “politically correct” measures for citizen coexistence and fight against social exclusion through new forms of interaction and communication in the classrooms.

⇒ Elaborated materials:
– The code of courtesy for socially appropriate communication.
– A guide of actions for the inclusion of different cultures.
– Intervention procedure for immigrant, gypsies, and general social disadvantaged families.
– An improvement plan for conflict mediation.
– Showcasing the project’s work and achievements through artistic creations and exhibitions.
– Protocol for prevention, together with an active participation in the fight against Bullying and Social Exclusion.

⇒ Added value:
The implementation of this project benefited the transnational cooperation, which is the educational objective of the European Union, leading to qualitative and quantitative changes.
– Qualitative: awareness of educational communities; management of social and cultural problems; promotion of internationalization and European values; acceptance of cultural pluralism; non-discrimination; tolerance; justice, solidarity and gender, social and cultural equality and inclusion; equity; outweigh inequalities within disadvantaged groups, such as people with disability, educational difficulties, obstacles, etc.
– Quantitative: classrooms harmony improvement; responsibility towards inclusion, cohesion and understanding; decrease the number of early school-leaving; multilingualism; greater use of ICTs in the social life; greater respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality,etc.

⇒ Positive impact:
The impact of this novel project work has resulted in a transcendent steady improvement of coexistence (current issue in the media), that has left a mark in different aspects:
– Social: schools have an innovative role changing “ways of doing” in the environment, locality, region, country and Europe.
– Community / citizen: spaces for intercultural inclusive dialogue, by introducing new communication behaviors in different languages.
– International: exchange of “ways of doing” between centers, environments, locations and European countries.

⇒ Broadcast. This project has been released in press, television, blog, online platforms: Valor, Facebook, E-twinning, TwinSpace, etc. Please find link here: https://erasmusarmonia.wordpress.com

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 110495 Eur

Project Coordinator

CEIP Manuel Pacheco & Country: ES

Project Partners

• I. C. E. DE AMICIS
• EB1/PE da Lombada – Ponta do Sol
• 49th Primary School “Benito Juárez”
• SP1Sopot
• GO! Atheneum 1 Hasselt