Packing a children’s rights treasure chest Erasmus Project

Project Title

Packing a children’s rights treasure chest

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: Integration of refugees; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

It is the task of UNESCO to promote international cooperation in education, science and culture, to protect democratic values ​​and thus to spread respect and communal togetherness between people. This project has consolidated these universal human endeavors, which are among the goals of the general concept of education of European countries. The cooperation included a Polish and a German school. The aim of the project was to learn about commonalities in democratic values ​​through confrontation with children’s rights and to regard democracy development as a valuable asset. In order to achieve a link to the lifeworld of the students, our project was based on the experiences of the children and put the very individual meaning of children’s rights in the center. To achieve this, specific “places of democracy” of the partner countries were examined more closely and their historical significance for the development of democracy was explored together. This democratic “treasure” can be found in the exhibits of the three manufactured treasure boxes. These were made available to the public after the project by making the treasure chest exhibits available on the networks through a proven rental system. The children’s rights treasure boxes are also interdisciplinary teaching content and were installed in the school program.
The method of the museum suitcase developed by the University of Padaborn was successfully adapted to the new teaching content. In contrast to the museum case, the content of the treasure chest is characterized by a significantly higher proportion of the individual interpretation of the terms “democracy” and “children’s rights”. The treasure boxes were filled with information about children’s rights from the eyes of the students. We filled them with home-made unique pieces or small archives that represent the considered region and make it especially tangible for children. On the one hand, traditional functions of the museum, such as collecting, preserving, archiving, exploring, documenting, presenting, forming and communicating are thematized. On the other hand, the concept of democracy in its most varied forms, social values ​​and norms as well -as its implementation in everyday life- was made tangible.
Within the 24 months, three project meetings were held. The meetings each included five full project days with a total duration of 6-7 days. An extension to more than five days has had a particularly favorable effect on group identification and better suited the age of the participants. Due to the organizational framework (weeks of meetings of the European Parliament), the final meeting, which did not take place in any of the participating countries, had to be relocated from Strasbourg to Brussels. This step was necessary in order to visit the relevant European institutions and to ensure the necessary transfer of already acquired knowledge from national to higher international level. In order to meet the requirements of the Polish National Agency, the Polish group additionally visited the originally planned town of Strasbourg on the way back. In the transnational project meeting, the national group size was set to 15, taking into account financial conditions and the interest in the student body (pupils with special needs in learning and behavior, pupils with a migrant background, refugees). Using the storyline method and mind-mapping, the students were instructed to get to know democracy in the country and to develop their own access to the development of children’s rights with the help of prior knowledge built up in subject-specific education. The resulting treasure chests allowed a variety of haptic, playful and thoroughly critical experiences and enriched the regional and supra-regional democratic-cultural education of children. On the one hand students of the partner schools had contact with their own regional environment and its democratic structures in children’s rights. On the other hand, we were able to open our eyes to similarities in democratization as a result of the history and culture of Europe.
The learning environment prepared by the teachers has been able to integrate a variety of holistic approaches (museum, internet, books, …). At the end of the project three treasure chests were created (Germany, Poland, EU).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 60760 Eur

Project Coordinator

Grundschule am Humboldtring & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Publiczna Szkola Podstawowa nr 28 w Opolu