You do not find a happy life - you make it!

We had five main objectives for our project. First, to establish and promote international relations and cooperations between our schools in Finland and Croatia. Secondly, we wanted to give our st...

We had five main objectives for our project. First, to establish and promote international relations and cooperations between our schools in Finland and Croatia. Secondly, we wanted to give our students an opportunity to make foreign friends and to get to know foreign cultures and their history, nature and educational systems, to name but a few. Thirdly, we wanted to enhance the language skills of both teachers and students, and give them a true authentic opportunity to speak English. We wanted this to boost everyone's confidence in speaking a foreign language and also to become more open-minded and interested in foreign cultures.Fourthly, we wanted to enhance the sense of community and active participation within our schools and between our schools. Working together is beneficial to everyone's well-being and that brings us closer together and gives that sense of belonging to a community. Our fifth objective for the project was to find means for enhancing the well-being and general motivation of all the students and teachers, and to find new good practices for this. We also wanted to find out more about the scientific research on the topic of well-being.

We had listed 16 activities for the project to take place over the period of 20 months. The main activities were five visits to each other's countries. There were two visits for Finnish students and teachers to Croatia, two visits for Croatian students and teachers to Finland, and one visit and meeting in Helsinki, Finland, for us four teachers who originally planned and carried out the whole project. After each visit we always had a theme day for the whole school to use the information and knowledge we had gained during the visits. Thus, there were two days presenting Finnish/Croatian culture in Croatia/Finland respectively. There was a theme day on well-being organized in both schools. We carried out a survey on well-being twice during the project, at the very beginning of the project and at the end of the project. We also reported to each other about our theme days and which activities we had had, and thus we had online meetings on Google Meet. Besides evaluating the project during the project many times, we also had a final evaluation session for all the students and the teachers who had taken part in this project during these 20 months.

Our main concrete output is a digital magazine that the students have written. It can be described as a guidebook or a handbook or a self-help manual for well-being. It entails articles based on the scientific research on well-being and the factors affecting our well-being, and it entails stories and practices of well-being that we tried in both countries, as well as tested and tried tips on well-being based on the activities we had during each visit. We have also shot tweöve different kind of videos, three on each of the four visits with students and teachers. We also did a survey on well-being of the students and teachers and analysed that. The main findings were that the factors impacting on our well-being were very much related to culture. We have now established international relations and cooperation for our schools, and we have planned to continue working together. We have thought of applying for another Erasmus+ project with the third partner, or we might go for job shadowing. Whether it is with another kind of project funding from the EU or a smaller project at our our expense, or just online meetings in some classes, our cooperation surely continues!