Strengthening personal development of students with special needs through intercultural activities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Strengthening personal development of students with special needs through intercultural activities

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: Access for disadvantaged; Transport and mobility; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

The basic idea of the Erasmus-Partnership of an intercultural model to create inclusion and a special kind of participation in society for children and students with special needs arose during the Erasmus mobility activity and was developed by teachers and students. It was a result of the good cooperation of the involved schools.
Referring to the UN convention the focus was to strengthen the intercultural thinking of our disabled and disadvantaged children. The new project helped the students to defend themselves against acts of exclusion, intolerance and xenophobia. It was organized interdisciplinary and across forms and involved whole school. The proposals were multi-layered and helped the children to develop their own personality, in addition it improved their competences and skills. The children also worked with different kinds of media simultaneously. Furthermore, the project helped to reduce the amount of early school leavers and aroused interest of the students to participate actively in different kinds of clubs, e.g. sport clubs, creative or technical clubs. The project helped students to become part of our society.
In the forefront, local clubs and organizations appeared in the respective schools and suggested their activity profile. During the activities multinational thinking and acting as well as sympathy and understanding for each other promoted. Every student did a workshop including local proposals which implied the resulting incultural and inclusive ideas to document especially the social participation. Consequently, we had a selection of an European diversity in all partner regions, which gave an insight into the corresponding profiles.

Rudolstadt: Line Dance, floating, football, art school, performing arts
Pula: circus, juggling, balancing, Yoga, shooting with bow and arrows, clown show
Lesnica: music and dance, theatre performance
Puck: creative courses, sailing, traditions
Schweich: outdoor education, canoeing, mountain biking, climbing

During each mobility every student created his or her individual certificate. They were able to take photos and make short movies independently. These media skills helped to create their individual certificate of attendance including the logo which was the basis and the result of the first meeting.
At the same time we explored in companionship new ways of learning and learning methods, learned about specific and local activites, possibilities but also got to know special features of the European countries, worked practice-oriented and achieved the opportunity of European conferencing. Collective practice-oriented working generated respect and acceptance for several impaiments, together with other lifestyle habits accompanied by the national characteristics. Learn-basis and learn-cause generate the issue of an activity portfolio which presented country specific core themes. The resulting portfolio has used as a basis for future students of each school to draw their interest to a certain club. Consequently, the students learnt to be an active part in our society , for example they became an active member in a sports club or they implemented new expierences and needs.
The experiences, which the travelling group (6 students/3 teachers) gathers in the partner school, can pass on in full to the other participants directly. The summary of all the activities and results referring to the leisure- catalog were apprehended digitally, were placed at the disposal to every participant in form of a portfolio as a certificate and were presented in the respective schools. Furthermore we provided this catalogue for different clubs, organisations, public institutions, mentors and service of integration to make our experience available to all other students. Other supporting schools also got an insight in our partnership and were able to use our results as a basic and impulse for further special educational projects.
Our song and a movie about all our leisure activities were another result of our cooperation and were published in local television channels. In general, we used the website of the school to present our activities. The European platform e-twinning supported the dissemination of our results.
The participation in that project has an amazing advantage for our students and a chance to get to know parts of Europe. For most of them it was the only way to go abroad and got to know these activities, countries and traditions. The sustainability was granted throughout the media representation. In addition to that, the project was included into the conception of the respective schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 160521,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Staaliches regionales Förderzentrum Johann-Heinrich-Pestalozzi Rudolstadt & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Zakladni skola, Stribro, Revolucni 1431
• Skola za odgoj i obrazovanje – Pula
• Specjalny Osrodek Szkolno-Wychowawczy w Pucku
• Zepol Placowek Oswiatowych w Lesnicy – Specjalny Osrodek Szkolno -Wychowawczy w Lesnicy
• Levana-Schule