Don’t Worry, Be Healthy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Don’t Worry, Be Healthy

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

This partnership was based on the idea that despite continuous discussion about health issues, most of our students struggle to adapt to healthy habits in everyday life. After working together for three years we can say that our project “Don’t worry, be healthy” proved to be successful in many ways. The main achievements in the project are connected with the fact that students learned how to adopt healthy habits in their life to avoid early school leaving. First of all, they managed to use various applications to monitor health with the help of wristbands. Thanks to this, they follow a healthy lifestyle in their everyday school life as they have got a list of applications that they can use whenever they need. Then, they have become familiar with cultural diversity on eating habits by producing national dishes from natural products. They can collect ideas from a recipe book and cook Hungarian, Lithuanian, Austrian, Polish and Greek dishes. Later the participants took part in screen-off activities and realized how important such games are for their physical and mental well-being. A list of activities has been prepared that can help them relax, solve problems without a computer and become more creative. Over the last year, the students learned how to prepare healthy snacks for school and created their choice of healthy menu for each weekday. They can use these menus easily now and avoid fast food. Finally, the participants of the project did a lot of sports together to experience positive competition, motivation to improve their physical potential and realise the importance of team working. By attending each Learning, Teaching and Training Activity, the students experienced the cultural heritage of each partner country which raised their knowledge, tolerance and social interaction.
Our project has produced several concrete outputs. We made a collection of applications to stay healthy. With this collection of applications, students can get to know different applications to monitor their health and then be able to get feedback about their activities. We believe this is a good way to encourage students to influence their physical well-being. A recipe booklet has been designed. In the booklet, one can find recipes for meals of five countries and the photos that were taken during a Learning, Teaching and Training activity. A handbook of healthy snacks to school was created with a healthy snacks menu that can be prepared by students for themselves. By making and trying healthy snacks the students can adopt healthy eating habits to their daily schedule at school. Screen-off activities were introduced to show our students there is life beyond the screens. Additionally, each partner school presented an interactive city tour and offered a practical guide with information about the history and the heritage of the city.
Partner schools composed films to introduce their schools. For each Training Activity, a partner school produced a presentation showing its weakness. We wrote new lyrics for the tune “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and we practised singing together during project meetings. A photo exhibition was organized during our last meeting. Participants used photos of all the meetings to prepare a photo exhibition which was published at the municipality open-museum park in Kalamata.
Besides fulfilling the special aims of each Training Activity, our evaluation results showed that participants learned to express their opinions, practised critical thinking techniques, practised foreign languages, discovered their strengths, improved their IT skills.
The project has fulfilled our expectations which means it will have long-term effects on the community of the participating schools. Tangible results will be available for the partner schools and everybody both on the project website (https://dontworrybehealthy2018.wordpress.com/ ) and on the project’s Twinspace (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/58841/home). These ensure that partners will have access to them in the long term, they can use these results in their future lives.
There will be other effects that are intangible results of the project. First of all, we think we have become more enthusiastic towards working with other countries, we have become more committed to European cooperation. We are motivated to start new cooperation, new projects in the long term. Participating students, teachers and their schools have understood how important it is to live a healthier life. They will use the results of the project in their lives. Students have learnt to be more open, to be more responsible, to be more tolerant. They will be able to understand other cultures too. They have acquired skills that help them deal with new situations. And finally, as the project has shown more attractive education students will be more committed to life-long learning.

Project Website

http://dontworrybehealthy2018.wordpress.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 133885,96 Eur

Project Coordinator

Pecsi Mezoszel Utcai Altalanos Iskola & Country: HU

Project Partners

• 2nd Gymnasium of Messini
• Joniskio “Ausros” gimnazija
• Neue Mittelschule Puntigam
• Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im Boleslawa Chrobrego