PROJECT | About the project
About the project
Europe and in particular the EU is under massive stress: ….. the refugee crisis; exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy towards renewable energy; Brexit; anti-EU populism and growing nationalism in a number of EU countries; . disaffection with and towards the Brussels administration….(cf. ULRICH SPECK; https://euobserver.com/opinion/131194).
The EU in the 21st century is facing a lot of challenges and it requires not only joint efforts of all politicians but also the struggle of its citizens to preserve the achievements and enhance the basic principles of the people of the EU living together. The six schools that have teamed up in this project have an intensive history with Europe but their common objective is to foster EU ideals and to provide their students with the necessary setting that they can stand for the slogan “We are backing Europe!”.
The question is what can schools actually do in this respect? In conjoint analysis of the situation at the schools we found out that there is a need for a more practical approach where students are confronted with aspects of the future problems and step by step develop ways to solve them in a European context with the joint effort of six European partners. The scope of the topics includes among others organic food, integration of refugees, voluntarism and actions to repress nationalism favouring “Europe first”. All the action taken will be embedded in the “European cultural heritage” and thus meeting one of the horizontal priorities of the programme. But it is not only the horizontal priorities that this project is aiming at but the focus is rather on the EU strategic framework “Education and Training 2020”. We are determined to meet the four strategic objectives with mobility being an inherent element of every project in the KA2 context. Our activities aim at improving the quality of education and training with every tutorial we provide and this includes equity, social cohesion and active citizenship, especially for our students being citizens of the EU. And finally entering new territory with our approach at lot of innovation and creativity will be needed to reach our objectives.
Apparently there is a need in schools for practical guidelines in this field as dealing with Europe has very often been limited to information about political institutions in Brussels and geographical data. The intention of this project is to experience the EU and its member countries from inside and from active participation dealing with problems we are facing every day.
In brief the main project goals are as follows:
- Students get to know and work on various topics directly associated with the future of the EU
- Schools develop tutorials on these topics published on a website for exchange and advancement and for the use of schools in general
- Students and teachers cooperate with partner schools in different parts of Europe, develop transnational understanding and experience working and living in another country