Youth for Europe – Agenda 2017-2019 Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth for Europe – Agenda 2017-2019

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: Environment and climate change; Gender equality / equal opportunities; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Europe and the EU had faced a lot of challenges in recent years: the refugee crisis, the Brexit, the rise of populism and thus many other current issues were left behind and therefore we, schools from Finland, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece felt that it was time to fight intolerance and ignorance of environmental and social issues.
With this background we developed an Erasmus+ project with the title “Youth for Europe – Agenda 2017-2019”. The two-year- project was about the challenges young people face, with themes that were currently interesting to students, e.g. youth unemployment, situation of minorities, gender equality, food loss, environmental problems or human rights. The students formed their own sustainable development agenda with a focus on environment and society in the first meeting, and we dealt with the topics further in the project meetings and in the tasks between the meetings.
Our objective was to enable young people to become active citizens, tolerant, open-minded and to acquire knowledge, language, ICT, project work, interaction skills, learn to organize things and be self-organised, develop mutual understanding, learn about other European cultures, become active European citizens that know how to express their opinion in a solution-focused way. In many ways we succeeded in this. It was an absolute pleasure to see the students work together in international groups, being active and trying to make a difference.
Other objectives were to strengthen the teaching profession, exchange good practices and new methods among teachers and to integrate them into lessons. This was done through TPMs, where teachers had workshops on various themes and each country’s school system, had a possibility to job shadow different lessons, had pedagogical cafes and teacher meetings where organisational matters were discussed. Many of the participating teachers were first-timers and they became more motivated, committed, and improved their language, IT, management skills. They became more ready to interact internationally, and many of them will want to continue working on international projects in the future.

All 6 participating schools had different backgrounds. The work and responsibilities were divided between the partners in the first TPM. The first TPM was a really good start of the project: we could deal with all the organisational challenges, set up the timetable of the meetings, make different forms, decide on ground rules, divide the tasks and get to know each other. It was very easy to start the project with the students after that, because we had already given each other good advice eg. on different ways to choose the students Each school hosted a meeting, thus many more people were involved such as other members and students inside the school, families, local community, different organisations and companies.

We had both transnational project meetings (TPM) and LTTs. Most TPMs were at the same time as LTTs. TPMs aimed at strengthening the teaching profession by giving teachers a chance to monitor lessons, take part in workshops, get to know other education systems and to discuss strong and weak points with colleagues. The aim of the LTTS was to give students possibilities to interact, and give them a chance to promote the agenda and do project work face-to-face with their European peers. The students learned about different cultures, how young people their age live, what their interests were, and what differences and similarities there were in their lives.
Both TPMs and LTTs were important for the implementation and success of the project. The students did their project work between the LTTs and then compared and presented those at LTTs, at which they deepened their knowledge on the subjects in workshops. They acquired a vast set of skills. Some of the tangible results were: our agenda, logo, news bulletins, videos, articles, explainities, vocabulary, quizlets, Earth Hour event, questionnaires, interviews, posters, calendar, panel talks etc.We communicated mostly via e-mails or whatsapp, eTwinning, and sometimes we skyped. The communication between the coordinators was very good. Most of the results were published and shared on the project’s homepage https://eerasmuspluss.wixsite.com/agenda17-19 and on the Erasmus+ project results site.

The project enhanced the knowledge and awareness of the topics. The participants became more active, motivated and widened their network. Their hard and soft skills improved. The project helped to fulfill the goals of the curriculum, as it integrated different subjects and many relevant topics such as sustainability, internationalism, entrepreneurship etc. Teachers developed and improved language skills and had a lot of possibilities to discuss best practices. The coordinators feel they now have the know-how to run European projects, as this project was run very openly and thus can be used as an example for future projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 155785 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kimpisen lukio & Country: FI

Project Partners

• 2 PEIRAMATIKO GENIKO LYKEIO ATHINON
• Karlfeldtgymnasiet
• HAK Judenburg
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Tropea
• Jakob-Friedrich-Schöllkopf-Schule