Leaving home, coming home: A project to make students aware of migration in our countries Erasmus Project

Project Title

Leaving home, coming home: A project to make students aware of migration in our countries

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Creativity and culture; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

Migration is a very complex issue that concerns almost all countries in the world, certainly to various extents and with different impacts on politics, economies, societies and individuals in particular – but basically all nations have to face and deal with the advantages and problems that it incites.

Thus it seems only natural that young students of different European countries get in touch with each other and communicate about the matter as envisaged in the present Erasmus+ project entitled “Leaving home, coming home: A project to make students aware of migration problems in our countries“. With six secondary, mostly vocational schools from Turkey, France, Spain, Romania, Germany and Poland as participating partner countries, a huge and multidimensional range of aspects presented itself in February 2015, the time of writing the application: Turkey needed to cope with an increasing number of Syrian refugees, France and Spain were facing migration from Africa, Romania was mostly affected by emigration to economically more privileged countries such as Germany, for instance, which, in turn, faced rising numbers of asylum seekers. Finally Poland, which saw large numbers of young and often qualified men and women leave their country to find work in other European countries and which will more than likely have to deal with migration from Ukraine.
As our project progressed from the time of writing the proposal in February 2015 to the last international meeting in Kracow, Poland, in April 2018, we observed a substantial shift in the public awareness of MIGRATION. While in the spring of 2015 few students even realized what was happening at the coasts of Lampedusa the so called REFUGEE CRISIS of the late summer 2015 has led to a rising nationalism across the European countries and the closing of borders and thus almost triggered a EUROPEAN CRISIS.
Handling only political aspects had not been our intention: At first sight, these issues seem remote from the students’ daily lives in their respective countries but, taking a closer look, it becomes evident that especially young people are concerned as they are living in a Europe that becomes more and more connected and where transnational communication and interaction play an important role: one’s future job is no longer limited to one’s country of origin, traveling to other European countries has become easier and even personal encounters at home or school may involve different nationalities. Therefore dealing with a (common and individual) national and European identity has become necessary. This was our leading aim.
The main goals of our project are linked to positioning oneself as an individual in such a fast-growing, intertwined and complex global world and acting accordingly.

As our project aimed at a greater understanding and an increased responsibility towards social, linguistic and cultural diversity, which includes the students’ active involvement in concrete social settings, such as helping out in asylum homes or talking face-to-face to refugees, for instance, we decided to produce a film to which we would add detailed pedagogical material to be used not only by the participating schools but also other schools – theoretically world wide. By this, we intended to improve the young people’s language skills allowing personal interaction with other youngsters from the participating European schools, which evidently requires English or French as a lingua franca.
E-twinning, e-mailing as well as the intensive work on our common film project also enhanced the learners’ digital competences. In addition, by cooperating with a professional Film Team company, our participants were brought in contact with real life´s conditions of making movies. This has been realized by framing our work into international subprojects and our six international meetings, three of them as workshop training meetings with international groups of students. We first got into the subject by working out the topics in the first year, then realized our film in the second year and finally by creating a homepage with pedagogic material and carrying out a dissemination strategy in our third year.
The film can be seen as the pivotal project and result, everything else was developed around it. The film is, as intended, a short film mosaique that reflects the results of five different cinematic sub projects realized in varying constellations of the six countries involved: This goes from Syrain refugees in France telling why she needed to flee from her country, Romanian youths suffering from living separated from their parents working abroad, the destiny of Polish migrants to Istanbul in the 19th century, family trees of today´s pupils in our Spanish and German schools or students revealing their new life in the UK. What they have in common, though, is that they touch the lives and individual environments of all our students: Identifying with it will enable them to face this European challenge

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 139650 Eur

Project Coordinator

Heinrich-Emanuel-Merck-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ISTANBUL ATATURK FEN LISESI
• Colegiul Economic “Ion Ghica” Bacau
• INSTITUT D’EDUCACIÓ SECUNDÀRIA VALL D’HEBRON
• Zespol Szkol Mechanicznych nr 2
• Lycée Polyvalent Auguste Loubatières