You and me – equality!? – Students from Germany and Sweden discovering the chances and challenges of diversity in democratic societies Erasmus Project

Project Title

You and me – equality!? – Students from Germany and Sweden discovering the chances and challenges of diversity in democratic societies

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: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

You and me – equality!? – Students from Germany and Sweden discovering the chances and challenges of diversity in democratic societies
In this bilateral project students from Lerbäckskolan Lund (Sweden) and Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Radevormwald (Germany) work on the aspects of equality, diversity and democracy in order to gain knowledge on the meaning behind these terms and their connection to European values. Diversity is an important part of European every-day-life and migration and integration pose challenges to all European societies. Solutions for these challenges are to be discussed with the students as well as experiencing chances to build upon. In the course of the project the young learners will hopefully develop an open-minded and critical awareness of the issues at stake that will leave them supportive of future solutions and enable them to be ambassadors of living together peacefully in multicultural societies across Europe.
The participating 8th graders (total number of students travelling: 60, aged 13-14) take part in an exchange with the partner school, travelling to the partner school for one week, where they are staying in their partner’s family. All participating students keep an individual portfolio in which they document the experience of the exchange and their learning progress in the project. During this two-year-project 15 students from Sweden travel to Germany in autumn 2019. The same students are then visited by their German partner students who travel to Sweden in spring 2020. In the second project year new groups (8th graders) of 15 German and 15 Swedish students meet in the same way to work on the issues of the project.
During the project meetings the students work in mixed groups and learn about the development and role of stereotypes and the meaning of equality and diversity in their societies as well as their private lives. They also do workshops led by external experts. These are supposed to train the students’ communication skills required when dealing with the issue and will also teach them about about phenomena like populism, discrimination, fear of diversity in Europe as well as values and strategies helping to effectively counter these aspects, such as civil courage, tolerance, empathy, etc.
In well-prepared encounters with refugee-families the students get a chance to learn about migrants’ fates and experiences and their motives for leaving their home-countries. The students prepare interviews but also activities together with the refugees (e.g. cooking) so that a personal relationship can be established.
Differences in the perception and understanding of various aspects of the topic between the individual participants but also a comparison between Swedish and German experiences raise students’ awareness and encourage the partners to look at these matters from a more European point of view rather than just seeing one’s own national perspective.
Based on the knowledge and experiences gained through the different activities and assignments the students also work on creative tasks, which give them the chance to express their personal attitudes and ideas in connection to the topic. They produce e.g. photo-stories, cartoons, short films, etc., that will then be presented to and discussed with the other participants and other students and teachers from both schools.
Results from the project work and the creative tasks (texts, cartoons, postcards, posters, presentations, etc.) are published in our project blog and on the schools’ web pages. The project and its results help both schools to further promote the establishment of the ideas of equality, democracy and European values in their curricula and school life. The German campaign “School without racism”, which Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium is already part of, will profit from a more global and European approach and will be filled with more life and concrete ideas and activities through this project. This will also secure the long-term benefits of the project by contributing to the students’ development of a critical and open-minded awareness in connection to the challenges and chances of diversity in the German, Swedish and other European societies.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 62668 Eur

Project Coordinator

Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Radevormwald & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Lerbackskolan