“United in diversity”: How to be tolerant, open-minded and healthy European citizens Erasmus Project

Project Title

“United in diversity”: How to be tolerant, open-minded and healthy European citizens

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 2020

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Nowadays, debates about the true meaning of feeling or being European are omnipresent in the media (TV, radio or internet).
In her article, “Homo Europaeus: Does a European culture exist”, Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-French philosopher and literary critic, dives into the question of the European identity and the European culture.
Our 24-month European project, entitled “United in diversity”: How to become tolerant, open-minded and healthy European citizens” aims at, humbly, addressing this question. As Jean de La Fontaine stated, “diversity is my motto”. This diversity is at the core of the European identity and it is what makes us unique and it is also what can and should unite us.

Our project stems from a painful observation; a situation that our students face daily – that is “conflicts, rejection of others and from others, loss of motivation and confidence, resulting in early-school leaving”. Our regions are quite poor, culturally and financially speaking. Indeed, “40% of children in Rye live in households below the poverty line. This places Rye in second place in Rother’s child poverty index and within the 20% most deprived wards in England” (Source: Rother District Council). Regarding the county of Aisne, 20% of its inhabitants live below the poverty line and 12,5% are unemployed (Source: INSEE). This contributes to self-exclusion and exclusion of others. Nonetheless, our region is also at the crossroads of big French cities such as Paris, Lille or Reims and also some major European cities such as Brussels or London and it could, clearly, benefit from their influence. Our regions are not thonly ones concerned with these social questions. These are European issues. Indeed, fighting Discrimination, Encouraging and Promoting Equality and Respect are not simply school or regional questions. They are European issues.
Our schools embrace and encourage all actions and initiatives that contribute to fighting all types of discrimination (“Theme Days or Weeks” such as “Say No to Bullying Week” (Debate, Workshops, Exhibits, etc), ” Women = Men Day”, “courtesy Day”, etc).

The main objective of our project is to develop our pupils as tolerant, open-minded, sensible and respectful European citizens and engage them into learning about other cultures and lifestyles. It is important to encourage their curiosity, their openness to other cultures and nationalities and their propension to mobility.
Moreover, throughout this project, we also aim at creating awareness of the importance to have a healthy lifestyle. This is also a European issue. Indeed, the EU has successfully implemented a comprehensive policy, through the ‘Health for Growth’ health strategy. In this respect, it is important that teenagers become aware, very early in life, of the importance to lead a healthy lifestyle. The adolescent years are the best years to educate people to a healthy and balanced lifestyle and to open their mind to this European concern.
We are building this partnership with a view to increasing our students’s motivation, ambition and self-confidence, improving their view of the world surrounding them, developing and improving their skills, improving their physical condition – in a word, creating the European citizens of Tomorrow.
There are numerous objectives for our students but there are also many objectives for the staff and the teachers involved in the project. Indeed we aim at making our teaching methods more innovative and more attractive than regular usual teaching methods. The reputation and standing of our schools will also be impacted by such a project.

In order to reach the objectives listed above, a wide range of activities is planned during the two years of our project. These activities will include a presentation of the pupils and of their schools and countries, the creation and the election of a logo to illustrate and promote the themes of our project, the creation of posters and shooting of videos to promote and advertise a healthy lifestyle, the presentations of different sports and physical activities in order for the pupils to get acquainted with sports and physical activities from their counterparts’s country, the presentations of sport films along with the values they convey, the shooting of a video debunking stereotypes – stereotypes about boys and girls and stereotypes about different European nationalities, productions such as poems, poetry slams, posters, etc to fight against Bullying, the presentations of remarkable people who fought against Discrimination (Gender and Race Discriminations) All of these productions will be uploaded on the twinspace and on the project-related websites.

The planned activities in the project will be totally in line with the pupils’ curriculum so all the students will be involved in the activities – although not all of them will take part in the mobilities. As a consequence, the project and its objectives will become an integral part of the pupils’ school life for two years.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65624 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège de Wassigny & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Rye college