Human Opportunities for Peace in Europe – Lifelong learning democracy and active citizenship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Human Opportunities for Peace in Europe – Lifelong learning democracy and active citizenship

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: Home and justice affairs (human rights & rule of law); EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Five secondary schools from Luxembourg, Spain, Germany, Slovakia and Poland developed HOPE as a project specificly fostering high quality skills and civic competence through a strategic partnership. They had realised that young people struggle to fit into society, to find the active place as responsible citizens and to meet labour market expectations in a Europe seemingly falling apart in front of our eyes. A growing social gap, refugees crises caused by civil wars and right-wing parties winning ground in many countries convinced them to adequately adapt their school policy plans. We had found that education systems have a crucial role in building the right 21st century skills and competences and strive for a dynamic combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the many and varied real-life contexts on which people need to use them. The idea of HOPE – Human Opportunities for Peace in Europe – was born. As objectives, the HOPE project included not only the key competences that relate to traditional school subjects but also cross-curricular ones that enable people to pursue learning throughout their lives, contribute to democratic societies and to succeed in today’s and tomorrow’s world of work with its demand for high skills combined with creativity and the ability to innovate. Following this concept, the five schools installed students’ work groups called HOPE clubs for voluntary, motivated students aged between 15-18 (in group sizes between 8 and 20 students at each school) being interested in making a change in society. The students were coached by committed teachers from different subjects such as languages, biology, history, geography, philosophy etc. The wide range of project activities addressed not only the HOPE clubs, but practically the whole local school community as described in the following:

In order to make our students engage themselves in European peace development, the HOPE project carried out three core pillars at the weekly HOPE club meetings at each school:

1st pillar: We fostered our students’ political knowledge / awareness by preparing them for MUN conferences (“diplomatic competence”). We introduced and practised debating with them, produced guideline booklets and interacted with the clubs from the other HOPE schools. We worked with methods like role-plays of debating sessions simulating the United Nations and situational games, discussion events with (local) politicians and the school public, world café, and organised exhibitions for the whole school community. During the project period, apart from conducting local Mock MUNs at each school, all HOPE project schools participated in several international debating events/MUNs, of which LuxMUN served as a MUN premiere in the country:

ToMUN 2017 (Warm-up) , MEC Zilina 2017 (kick-off), LuxMUN 2018 (Mock MUN practrice), ZaMUN 2018 (C1), ToMUN 2018 (C2), ZaMUN 2019 (C3), ToMUN 2019 (C4), Megalux 2019
Apart from those, some schools even participated in more MUNs and MEPs. Each of these events involved the local school’s whole school community as well as other schools from abroad.

2nd pillar: The HOPE clubs promoted and initiated more social action in society. The made students understand themselves as active potential of change in society by initiating charity projects, some of which were conducted in paralel at each school (Christmas basar) and others individually. They comprised events such as fund raising (teachers’ car wash, second hand basar, cake sale…) as well as “time donation” / social services at old people’s homes, nurseries and animal shelters.

The 3rd pillar concerned “peace action” in school by training students to become active ambassadors of mediation. Having the peace mediator project at Wittekind Gymnasium / Lübbecke and IES Miguel Catalan / Zaragoza as models, the Lycée Michel-Rodange in Luxembourg developed and implemented a group of over 20 “students patrons” in charge of their well-being of younger classes (year 7) in particular in conflict situations into our school policy plan. These peace ambassadors started with the new school year 2019-2020 at the LMRL.

Summing up the project impact, it is obvious that after the HOPE project period the world still has to face crises of war – we had not expected that to be any different. However, our group of schools is proud to see that the HOPE project has brought both feasible and sustainable longterm benefits to our schools by teaching valuable skills to our students and by having been able to implement peace-enhancing structures into our schools. HOPE has inspired and taught students to think as responsible peace ambassadors in their environment as well as all over Europe. Regarding school education as a precious factor of influence in society, we are positive that such achievements can lay the fundament for change for more global peace in the future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 91730 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée Michel-Rodange & Country: LU

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA MIGUEL CATALÁN
• Gymnázium bilingválne
• Wittekind-Gymnasium Lübbecke
• I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im.M.Kopernika w Toruniu