United in Diversity
▶Summary
Our schools have started their cooperation some years ago in common eTwinning project. We wanted to continue and broaden cooperation by planning a common Erasmus+ project. The project was planned to work on nowadays Europe in order to open minds of students and teachers and improve the awareness of European citizenship. There was concern about current situation in Europe with rising nationalism and xenophobia.
▶Objectives
By implementing the project we wanted to create connections among students and teachers in order to preserve and collect links for the future. One of the aims was to raise awarness about different cultures in order to understand that even if having different backgrounds, we are all European citizens. In fact, we think that understand the importance of the EU way in everyday life is a goal of the project.
▶Activities
We started with teachers' planning meeting (3 days) which was implemented online because of CoVid. After this students got to know each other in eTwinning and online video meeting. Major steps of projects were: 1) Online meeting: "Nationalism and Xenophobia". Students researched history of the EU and European collaboration, as well as current situation in Europe regarding the topic. 2) Meeting in Arconate, Italy: "Richness of Diversity". Finnish students and teachers visited Italy. Program included groupworks and visits in refugee center, museum of world cultures and Unesco campus (in Milan and Turin). 3) Meeting in Kouvola, Finland: "Yesterday, tomorrow". Italian students and teacher visited Finland. Program included advance task related to each one's family history, group work and creative work where students research the past and imagine the future of Europe.
▶Impact
With the project we could really let the participant to raise their belonging to the EU, feel citizens and at home in Europe. Moreover, starting from the history of European Union, students could better have a point of view upon the current situation of Europe. Concrete outputs and results of the projects were: - Presentations and researches made during online meeting (uploaded in eTwinning TwinSpace) - Photo exhibition in Liceo d'Arconate made of project experiences (October 2022, TwinSpace) - Creative stories based on family history research (April, 2023, TwinSpace)