Europeans on the Move: The Challenges and Opportunities of Migration Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europeans on the Move: The Challenges and Opportunities of Migration

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: Migrants’ issues; Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Embracing migration – opportunities and challenges (EMOC)

Europe is experiencing large-scale migration. The European countries approach the political, economic and cultural challenges linked to this phenomenon in various ways.

Context and background of the project:
Young people, hence also our students are seldom aware of the complexity of large-scale migration, so this project aimed to show young people how migration works on different levels in society and how they can take an active part in an integration process, both as national citizens of their country and when they themselves migrate to other countries. It enabled our students to understand not only the migrants’ situation and their cultural and historical backgrounds but also the different ways in which the European countries meet the challenges and the opportunities of large-scale migration.
We hoped to encourage students to take an active and innovative part in meeting the challenges of migration and in seizing the opportunities that migration offers. Therefore, our main methodology was to focus on training the students’ innovative skills and their presentation skills. They had to learn how to solve authentic problems in co-operation with others. We wanted to make students realize that they make a difference and that their voice can be heard as active European citizens. As a long-term result, their awareness of the importance of their own active participation in all kinds of decision making will be heightened.

Objectives and impact: We wanted
1. …young people to understand how integration works on different levels of society.
2. …to bring young people of different European countries together so that they could present the current migrant situation in their countries and inform each other about different approaches to migration. How do authorities and politicians on different levels in society and the students themselves face present challenges and opportunities?
3. …to encourage students to take an active and innovative part in meeting the challenges of migration and in seizing the opportunities that migration offers.
4. … to supply the students with tools (including ICT tools) that enable them to develop creative and innovative thinking and problem-solving strategies in order to prepare them for future employment.
5. … to improve the students’ modern foreign language skills, primarily by using English as a working language and by introducing a “linguistic survival kit” containing useful phrases in our national languages.
6. …to develop the students’ communicative, social and personal skills through interaction with other young Europeans. In this way, we hoped to open the students’ minds to the diversity of cultures and languages and enable future mobility.
We can proudly say that we could realize all our objectives.

Description of activities and number of participants:
We carried out six 5-day-exchanges, which we called Erasmus+ conferences, one in each country. Each conference consisted of a number of social, cultural, and educational activities. The culmination of the conference was the actual presentations of the results (Action Plans etc.) to external partners and stakeholders. At each conference a minimum of four students and two teachers from each country, plus a large number of local stakeholders, representatives of local organizations, parents, additional students and teachers could participate.

Results and impact attained – long-term benefits:
A.s preparation for the exchanges the students had developed Action Plans suggesting ways in which they could actively address the challenges and seize the opportunities of migration. These plans were very diverse and were chosen according to the situation in each school and country. After each conference, the five partners created both short-term and long-term tangible and intangible results. Problems have been discussed as well as possibilities to improve the cooperation among the students as well as the impact every school can attain concerning our topic. Precise ways to improve the students’ social, linguistic and intercultural skills as well as there IT and content-related skills could be found. A project website in order to provide continuous access to the general information of the project activities, progress and results was established, newspaper reports were written and leaflets to inform a non-specialist audience about the project background and the main results were created and produced. Developing communicative and cognitive skills of students, cultivating effective partnerships between trainers, educators and community organizations so as to amplify our collective impact on the students are the proud result of this project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 147090 Eur

Project Coordinator

Carl-Friedrich-von-Siemens-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Verzlunarskoli Islands
• Dronninglund Gymnasium
• Instituto de Educación Secundaria López Neyra
• Gimnazija Tolmin