From a dreamer to a leader. Erasmus Project

Project Title

From a dreamer to a leader.

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: Inclusion – equity; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

“From a Dreamer to a Leader” project was carried out by 5 secondary schools from European countries: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Italy.
Our partnership is an example of great cooperation based on such ideas as: promotion of development, supporting equality and protection of cultural diversity.
Our paths crossed thanks to the possibilities created by the European Commission – we came across one another via the eTwinning platform. After some time we discovered that we have quite a lot to offer to one another. On one hand, we all struggled with similar problems, we wanted to achieve similar goals, but on the other hand, we felt we complemented each other. We immediately noticed we could benefit a lot from this partnership.
We wished that the activities we were planning for all the project participants would bring about such results as: increase in entrepreneurial skills, increase in business experience, increase in motivation for development, increase in language and social competences, better skills to use ICT, better self esteem, increase in readiness to work despite differences, bigger awareness of Europe’s cultural wealth, more open attitude towards persons from disadvantaged communities.
To reach these goals we took a number of steps. We carried out 5 short-term student exchanges (two of them online), 1 long-term mobility in Portugal and 3 short-term joint staff training events. Unfortunately, our partnership was disrupted by the outbreak of COVID19. We couldn’t have predicted the pandemic when we were planning the activities, however this experience proved that our partnership was really strong and that we were capable of conducting all short-term mobilities without extending the project.
We perfectly realised that giving up student exchanges, which we hadn’t carried out before pandemic, would deprive the participants of the chance to learn all the useful skills, making inspirational acquaintances, getting to know a lot of important facts, practising the language, peer interaction and all the other wonderful experiences. All the partners eagerly joined the preparations for the virtual exchanges, even though it meant an entirely new experience for all of us. We had had experience with online teaching but organizing and conducting a valuable virtual meeting for over a hundred persons is another story. The exchanges which were supposed to happen in Bulgaria and Lithuania took place online and they were truly successful.
We spent the time between mobilities mainly creating, running and developing our Students’ Coops, running the project blog, organizing and performing numerous activities aimed at reaching the project goals. These activities were among all: cooperation with local Career Counseling Centers, with Center for Citizenship Education and Polish Humanitarian Action, organizing Entrepreneurship Days, participating in charity and voluntary events, working for the project pedagogical teams, participating in promotional events and events disseminating the idea of Erasmus+ programme and many more. We were regularly performing evaluating activities, drew conclusions and implemented necessary changes.
After analysing the evaluation surveys, the observations and interviews we concluded that all the project objectives had been reached. We managed to develop entrepreneurial skills in all the participants, to raise motivation, improve language skills, self esteem, to sensitize to the beauty of the surrounding world, particularly the uniqueness of indigenous culture and art, to the language and historical values of all the partner countries.
We would like all the activities to be continued in the future. We are particularly going to carry on developing the Students’ Coops, publishing online materials about socio-cultural issues of European countries (blogs, vlogs or podcasts). We are planning to use our Escape Rooms for educational reasons, during integrating events, future projects and during promotional events. We will definitely take advantage of all the learned knowledge, skills, tools, applications and methods.
We believe that what we created will evolve, bear fruit and inspire new challenges. We would love to continue moving ahead with international cooperation since we only see benefits of it. We have been using our last project outputs up to now and we will definitely use this project outcomes. We have a lot to offer but we can still learn a lot.

Project Website

http://www.moderneducation.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 203983,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

LOXIV & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Centro de Formação Profissional da Indústria de Ourivesaria e Relojoaria (CINDOR)
• Second English Language School “Thomas Jefferson”
• Vilniaus savivaldybes Grigiskiu Sviesos gimnazija
• Istituto Istruzione Superiore ‘E. Majorana – A. Cascino’