Democracy for children in preschool Erasmus Project

Project Title

Democracy for children in preschool

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The societies of today impose high demands on people`s ability to live with and understand values inherent in cultural diversity. Preschool is a social and cultural meeting place that reflects society at large and prepares children for life in increasingly diversified contexts. Awareness of cultural heritage and participation in the culture of others contribute to help children develop an ability to understand and empathize with others’ circumstances and values thus providing a common background for this project .

Adults’ attitudes influence children’s understanding and respect of the rights and obligations that apply in democratic societies and for this reason, adults play an important role as role models. Attitudinal behaviour, from which fundamental democratic values are derived, is therefore the main ingredient for upholding democratic processes and building a foundation for participation and active citizenship.

By making children’s voices heard, we lay the ground for democratic processes to take place. Respect for children’s values and power of initiative requires knowledge and indepth discussions about the challenges that the Convention on the Rights of the Child and key competences for lifelong learning related to the objectives of the curriculum represent.

The objectives of this project can be summarized as an attempt to finding a common understanding and consensus of the concepts of democracy, participation and influence. They also relate to democratic approaches to work, both as regards organizational settings and working environment. Last but not least, they refer to participatory methods for children and to the acquisition of skills for life. As regards staffs and parents, those who in fact imprint attitudes, behaviour and values, we hope that we have been able to influence and develop their sense of participation and ownership of processes.

Six preschools from five different countries, Sweden, Lithuania, Spain, Turkey and Croatia, representing different cultures, religions and socio-economic and educational backgrounds and circumstances joined this partnership and identified a common interest in the thematic of the project. They all agreed on a number of joint activities, both as regards processes and methodology, guidance and training of staffs and to creating e-learning platforms and a website for networking and dissemination activities that aimed at creating longlasting sustainable processes inside the partnerschools.

Through a continuous follow-up and evaluation of the project processes, we hope that we have made a small-scale contribution to the Europe 2020 strategy, to national priorities and objectives of the curriculum and finally to create learning environments inside our own organisations that grant consecutive sustainability and comprise awareness, knowledge and key competences.

Our main focus during this three years have been to reach a common understanding of the terms democracy, participation and influence in the perspective of Childrens rights. In order to reach that common understanding we have organized Transnational project meetings with different theme such as equality, respect, participation and influence. Each partner showed their good examples of how they had worked.

As a result of this project we can see a change of attitudes and awerness which have had, have and will have impact in how we think and do as pedagogues in our daily work and in the organization.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 121290 Eur

Project Coordinator

Förskolan Skogsgläntan & Country: SE

Project Partners

• SANTO CRISTO DE LA VERA CRUZ
• MEHMET METO ANAOKULU
• Djecji vrtic Radost Zadar
• Preschool “Taskius”
• “Klauzada”