My Europe – Your Europe – Your Say Erasmus Project

Project Title

My Europe – Your Europe – Your Say

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Inclusion – equity; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The “My Europe – Your Europe – Your Say” project (ME-YOU-US) aimed at teaching students age 11 to 15 to be more open-minded, more tolerant and empathic, learn about the universal human rights and get skills and competences of living and acting in communities in which community member feels valued and accepted, know their rights and obligations as citizens. The second major target group were the teachers who got a tool and were trained so that they acquired the skills of delivering trainings to students making use of project outputs.
The project used as a basis the manual of the “Otherness” Erasmus+ strategic partnership project (2015-2018) but took it a step further both regarding contents and geographical spread. The ME-YOU-US project involved some of the founding partner from Portugal and Greece, but also 3 new partners who contributed with their expertise, experience and potential to deliver trainings to larger numbers of numbers of teachers. The new partners were representatives of different stakeholders involved in school education – a representative of tertiary education, of regional authorities in school education and a nongovernmental organization working with vulnerable groups. The partners revised and upgraded the training resources from the “Otherness” project, created 18 new teaching resources (lesson plans and accompanying digital resources) and the final edition of the Resource Pack finally comprises 66 teaching resources which were used by teachers in the implementation phase. The collection of e-resources was created with cutting edge technologies. They are primarily meant to be used as complimentary to the activities described in the Teacher’s Manual, but could also can be used independently by students as food for thought or tutorials for acquiring new skills.
A project website was designed in 7 languages (English, and the partners’ mother tongues – Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish). Both intellectual outputs are freely available on the project website in the respective language version.
The implementation phase of the project involved some 5200 students in training activities making use of the Resource Pack created within the project. The project was implemented in 3 new countries (Poland, Spain and Romania) as well as in the old partner countries: Bulgaria, Portugal and Greece. The students in the ME-YOU-US project took part in regular training activities during two school years (2019/20 and 2020/21) on a monthly basis.
Two opinion polls were carried out to analyse what we have achieved by designing the Resource pack and organizing training activities with it. We evaluated the changes in students’ attitude to people, the new concepts and ideas they learned about and embraced, their skills as active citizens and members of communities, as citizens who care about and value all people regardless of their social status or cultural background. The poll questions can be grouped in several categories: Differences between people, Tolerance – Diversity – Mistreatment, Traditions– Culture – Refugees/Migrants, Socioeconomic Status, Disabilities, Aggressive Behaviour and Human Rights. There are positive changes in all categories, especially concerning the percentage of students who initially indicated they had no opinion, were not sure in their understanding of the poll questions or stated that they were neither for nor against the statements.
Project results and findings were disseminated through the partner websites and internal networks, through the project Facebook page, through the multiplier events organized as face-to-face events in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, and through the project web site. According to Google analytics, which was activated in December 2019, the monthly average of visitors is 131 sessions, corresponding to 715 page views; the ratio of new to returning visitors is 53% to 47% for the project duration; the vast majority of visitors to the website come from the countries of the partner institutions in the project, but access from other countries in the EU, the USA and China is also relevant.

Project Website

http://me-you-us.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 261935 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fondacia Prosveta-Sofia & Country: BG

Project Partners

• INSPECTORATUL SCOLAR JUD.DOLJ
• ASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIRIA AENAO
• 17th School “Damian Gruev”
• FUNDACION ALTIUS ESPANA
• Bratya Miladinovi Primary school
• SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK
• 54 SU St Ivan Rilski