ENRICHING LEISURE LIFESTYLE FOR EUROPEAN YOUTH Erasmus Project

Project Title

ENRICHING LEISURE LIFESTYLE FOR EUROPEAN YOUTH

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Inclusion – equity; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Young people are the present and the future of Europe. We are now committed to providing our youth enriching leisure activities for them to achieve social, emotional, vocational, physical, cognitive, and civic development. These positive outcomes will have an impact on both personal and community development.

In many cases, adults in charge consider free time as an opportunity for problem behaviour, however, leisure time is also an opportunity for self-expression and relaxation. It is the context in which young people can discover themselves as participants in the development of their communities and societies.

That’s why the objectives of our project work around three topics:

• Physical activity and use and enjoyment of the natural environment: Avoiding sedentary lifestyle by practicing any kind of outdoors physical activity, individually or in teams. The added physical and psychological benefits of undertaking physical activity in the natural environment is to reconnect students with nature.
• Culture: Approaching to any cultural or artistic manifestation: Getting the students to know the fine arts, literature, poetry and playwriting. Motivating them to approach languages, European traditions and customs. Giving them the chance to travel.
• Active citizenship: volunteering: Promoting students’ engagement and participation in associational life by giving something back to the community or make a difference to the people around them.

As for the international partnership, the project has also stimulated students to use acquired class knowledge in real life and encouraged them to make a commitement with their own learning process. Besides, the intercultural links with the countries involved in the project have also been strengthened.

This partnership involves seven schools from: Spain, Turkey, Bulgary, Netherlands, Romania, Italy and Germany. Each school, except for the Turkish, has organized a transnational meeting or a learning/teaching/training activity. The meeting of Aksaray was relocated in Gran Canaria due to security issues.

The impact of our Project has gone further than the students who attended the meetings. We believe to have benefited all our students between 13 and 16 which is approximately an amount of 2000 students.

Due to the nature of our Project, we have used either cooperative methodology or individual work; we can’t forget that the challenge is to supply the students with strategies to fill their leisure time with enriching activities. In this free time, they are sometimes alone. On the other hand, ours has been an inclusive project; the point was not to get great athletes or literature or solidarity prizes, but to get the students to achieve to participate in any of our activities regardless their social, physic or economic conditions. In the case of the learning/teaching/training activities held in each partner school, we have given priority to cooperative work and multinational teams have been compulsory.

Regarding the impact on our students, they have acquired healthy habits and learnt to appreciate any kind of artistic manifestation, even alternative or street culture. We have rose their interest in getting involved in any social groups to serve the community, either NGOs or Youth associations.

The linguistic skills in English have improved by being used as a means of communication among partners as well as digital competence and team work. There has also been an impact on the quality of our teaching skills by sharing good practices examples with our European partners. Every school has seen the need of balancing the offer of activities to their students around our three topics to guarantee a whole view of leisure, so that we can look after mind, body and heart simultaneously while we keep our students away from dangerous leisure and risky behaviour.

Most of the external contacted during the Project have shown the aim of going on with their contribution in the short and long term, but we would like to empower our older students to act as guides in some cases so that we can be sure of the sustainability of our project without funding.

Coordination among the different departments in each school has created a link that could lead to organizing joint activities around each of the topics of the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 152187 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES LA MINILLA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• HACI KERIM YARDIMLI IMAM HATIP ORTAOKULU
• 52 primary school ‘Tsanko Tserkovski’
• Liceul Tehnologic “Octavian Goga” Jibou
• scuola media Dante Alighieri
• Christelijk Lyceum Veenendaal
• Ökumenisches Domgymnasium Magdeburg