Raise your Voice, Cross your Borders! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Raise your Voice, Cross your Borders!

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 dialogue; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers

Project Summary

Prominent studies and opinion polls often claim that young people are disengaged from political institutions, distrustful of politicians, and disillusioned about democracy. This coincides with our expereienc, that the overall attitude of young people is one of dislike and passivity, resulting in disappointment about society and politics in general. We believe that we – as their teachers, their coaches on their life’s way – can make a necessary change.
This project wants to open student’s eyes for the social-political situation of their own country, to feel that they háve a voice and realize how situations of peers in other countries are. A complexity, in which we hope our students will find their own way as self-conscious citizens by learning ánd experiencing different ways of social-political influencing, in historical and modern perspective.
Our very different social-political contexts (Poland-Holland-Italy-Portugal-Lithuania) undoubtedly gives way to intensive exchange and a extended learning-process. In the project will participate teachers, students, parents, the local communities, representatives of local, national and European politics.

Our general theme of ‘Political Awareness’ is divided in 4 sub-themes:
1. Politics and Power: history of politics and how politics are a way of exercizing power.
2. Politics and Freedom: the – sometimes complicated – relation between politics and freedom of people.
3. Politics and People: politics as a way of organizing people, but also the – local, regional and national, but also juridical – bounderies it creates
4. Politics and Creativity: the way politics creates the lives of people ánd how people can or cannot be creative in their political actions.
On each field, bounderies/borders will be discovered as well as possibilities of change, in order to create the educational environment for students to develop themselves. Our goals are: inspiraton, education and training.

Our objectives:
1. Students will investigate on national political history.
2. Students will learn the differences and commonality between the political systems of participating countries and relate this to European politics.
3. Students will increase awareness that the political entity relates directly to social-economic problems of importance, as well as realisation that politics is a way of real problem-solving.
4. Students will study (in workshops) on the complex relation between ‘people’ and ‘politics’. Goal is that students will become more competent and democratic citizens, capable to raise a voice and have a say about educational, social and political matters.
5. We also aim to make “citizenship”, a subject that encompassed democracy, conflict resolution and ethics, part of the national curriculum.
6. To approach and comprehend meanings as: human rights, democracy, social equality, peace and international collaboration.
7. Students will improve – undoubtedly – their English.

Our results:
1. Surveys of the political history of the participating countries, resulting in regular presentations ánd creative products.
2. Experimental products like a Videoblog of the process of creating a new (fictional) political party, a competition of (critical) TED-talks
3. Presentations about the Borders/Limits of political freedom, including evaluation of artistic expressions.
4. Interviews with politicians.
5. Evaluation of (by ourselves made) surveys about the political awareness & involvement of young people and our students in particular, resulting in recommendations to politicians and schoolmanagers.
6. Reports and outcomes of the debates on political items on one of the 4 fields of Political Awareness
7. Documentary about student’s experience in the world of ‘politics and social media’ (interview/tv/radio/internet)
8. Kinesthetic model of teaching rhetorics/eloquence

We expect several elements of our project to be effective in our learning and teachingprocess. These successful means we will share with colleagues in and outside our schools. At the sametime students, more related to social-political themes, will develop a cooperative and proactive attitude, positively influencing the people around them.
Because the level of political awareness & involvement by youngsters is generally seen as low, but the need for a change at schools is widely felt, we expect schools and teachers to be interested in our project, profiting from our results. We will use all our effort to communicate our outcomes by e-twinning, website and our networks.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 147894 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liemerscollege & Country: NL

Project Partners

• ZSO NR 13 w Gdansku
• ISTITUTO DI ISTRUZIONE SUPERIORE “SEBASTIANO SATTA”
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Vilela
• Silutes Pamario pagrindine mokykla