Make A Difference Erasmus Project

Project Title

Make A Difference

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: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The MAD project was designed to raise proper awareness of the dependence of each individual on the others: this is something we daily rely on, though it could be not that visible – given the neoliberal ideology in which we live, that makes it quite hard for all of us to think in a way that is not solely individualistic. We thought it would be good to work with our students in order to flip the current vision of society – badly compromised with a hyper-individualistic perspective, in which each individual is living an experience of apparent freedom, but in the end, is losing the bonds with the others that make society even possible.
We needed to address our communities with activities, experiences, and reflections which could highlight the importance of mutual support, cooperation, empathy, and compassion to others. We also needed to promote active citizenship and proactive behaviors within local communities and groups, starting from the grassroots level to a higher frame – and, eventually, reaching out to the European dimension as a valuable horizon for a new international community.
Our students were involved in a three-stage experience:
MAD 1 was about making the students aware of their own social network – the proximity relationships such as family, friends were explored and reflected upon, as a basis for the growth of a responsible sense of ownership to a community of values. During this stage, the students have been working on the exploration of their closest social network, reflecting on the many ways we use to link with each other, how we build our opinions and how we categorize each other – the processes involved in the creation of our ingroups and outgroups. The main result of this stage was the Social Network Game – a tool designed and developed by the students from IIS Bona to create a visible scheme of the relationship within a group, to enforce the idea of the many ways in which all of us are connected to each other.
MAD 2 was about discovering the social networks in each one’s local community, with special regard to the associations and enterprises of the third sector, working with disadvantaged people to promote their participation in civil society. Each partner school started an exploration of their surroundings, getting to know a lot of different actors working in the promotion of welfare and active citizenship, discovering many interesting experiences in the field of mutual support and volunteer work. Through visits, interviews, dialogues with these operators, and guided reflections, we had the opportunity to deepen our knowledge of our local communities. The most relevant goal of this stage was the “MAD week” in Apeldoorn, where students, teachers, and school managers had the chance to blend together and take part in volunteer services, along with enterprises and volunteers from the town and the surrounding areas committed to strengthening the social bonds and helping the disadvantaged.
MAD 3 was supposed to be the final leap to a wider horizon – interdependence on an international level, with special regards to the mean provided by the European Union to promote civic participation and active citizenship. We managed to lead the training sessions which were scheduled to take place during the international LTT in Latvia. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 breakout, most of the planned activities had to be rescheduled. All of the partner countries had to abide by the rules from the national governments; in many cases, all the non-curricular activities were frozen or shut down. Therefore, we applied for an extension of the project terms to February 2021, hoping for a better situation. When it finally got clear that the scheduled activities were no longer sustainable, we had to change plans: we were supposed to deliver a Manifesto of Dependence at the end of MAD 3, so we focused on this target and worked to a final virtual LTT, which eventually led us to the creation of a shared Manifesto, which was built using digital tools – the output was a mixtape of footages that the students from the 5 partner countries prepared, to express the meaning of the project and its impact on their lives and their choices concerning their civic commitment.

In the long term, the MAD experience allowed the schools to build fruitful relationships with local actors working in the third sector: the project made it possible to initiate meaningful spin-off activities, which are currently in the process of being integrated within the educational profile of the involved schools.
The MAD experience did also promote an agreement about some core values that each partner school decided to adopt within their daily work: participation, mutual support, cooperation and responsibility have been elected as MAD core values, to be implemented through the schools’ rules and to be actively addressed through specific actions which each school committed itself to deliver on a yearly basis.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 127598 Eur

Project Coordinator

Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “Eugenio Bona” & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Veluws College
• Main-Limes-Realschule Obernburg
• Smiltenes vidusskola
• Druskininku Ryto gimnazija