Promoting Active Citizenship through Volunteering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Promoting Active Citizenship through Volunteering

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

Everyone wants the world to be a better place to live. Our motivation for this project is that we want our pupils to learn, understand and experience that if they want the world to be a better place then they can make a difference themselves. Actions lead to change and it is only through active participation in the solution, that we can make a difference.

Promoting Active Citizenship through Volunteering (PACV) involves 5 schools from Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and UK. Our aim is to plant the seeds for good and active citizenship within the participating students. This will include volunteering their time, charitable giving and developing a desire for and providing the tools for taking on social responsibilities through social entrepreneurship in the young people across 5 countries who will be engaged in our project.

The general objective is strengthening cooperation between European schools by developing a sense of Europeanness with a shared European heritage and thus removing any sense of insecurity in meeting with people from different cultural and religious backgrounds. With international collaboration, our objectives are to opening students’ minds for innovation and steer them in a direction to pursue their own ideas for charitable or social entrepreneurial projects which can be local, national or even internationally based. This may lead to contribution to job creation and economic growth.

The age range for our participants is from 14-17 years old. Each exchange will have 4 participants from visiting schools and may more for the schools that host the exchange visits.

This is a 2 year project. The activities in each country are based on local volunteering needs within the each partner schools’ local area. Pupils will gain hands on volunteering experience and engage in educational programs on the importance of volunteering which lead into social entrepreneurship.

A range of volunteering activities has been chosen by partner schools to ensure that school there is a choice for participating pupils i.e. helping
(a) children with special needs,
(b) the elderly,
(c) homeless people,
(d) children with leukaemia,
(e) in a kindergarten.
By working together on personal common core values (like caring, compassion, fairness, kindness, respect, unselfishness) on these projects we expect to enhance relationships between participants of the various countries involved thus promoting healthy social cohesion

Each partner school will hold disseminating events locally aim to (1) bring together local communities and strengthen the schools’ relationships with its local community and to enhance the reputation of the school making it more attractive locally, (2) to inspire others within the community into volunteering.

The project commences with training for teachers and coordinators of partner schools on data collection and presentation with a view to (the training at the end of the project on) data analysis and impact evaluation. The initial training also includes a risk assessment workshop. The Polish school has recently won a European Quality label and the Croatian school an eTwinning label. Other schools will learn from their experience to try and gain similar recognition.

The project makes extensive use of the eTwinning platform from the initial stages of bringing pupils together to break the ice between them, to working together on the project outcomes and to develop their social entrepreneurship projects. Participants will be encouraged to be creative and extend their ICT skills when deciding on the outputs for the project.

During the exchange visit, pupils will be introduced to social entrepreneurship and there will be time given to collectively come up with ideas and to start developing some of the ideas. After the exchange visits, overseen by their teachers, the participants will continue to develop the ideas and when these ideas have matured participants can start implementing their chosen projects.

The results and impact that we envisage are:
(A) For the pupils, we aims to (i) facilitate participation in civic and social life, (ii) foster employability, socio-educational and personal development (iii) develop language skills, entrepreneurial mind-set, critical thinking and creativity.
(B) For the teachers: enhancing their professional development and leadership skills.
(C) For the schools: building capacity through formal and non-formal learning and sharing and promoting best practices in volunteering between schools (ii)

The longer term benefits are to develop self-confidence and other soft skills that will provide participants with greater competitiveness for universities of their choice and better access to the labour market. For the schools the longer term benefits are strengthening relationships with European partner schools and with their local communities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 157066 Eur

Project Coordinator

Bury Park Educational Institute & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Zespol Szkol nr 2 w Lubartowie
• Kauno technikos profesinio mokymo centras
• BURHAN FELEK ANADOLU LISESI
• Ekonomska skola Pozega