About Our Project

We are three schools from three different countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia), with social and educational circumstances ranging from fairly similar to radically different. The same applies to the way citizenship education is performed in our schools.

The problematic observations we made among some of our students are poor understanding of their rights and obligations as citizens, lack of understanding of the migration crisis, under-appreciation of education, stereotypes and prejudice towards foreigners, negative gender stereotypes.

Thus, we decided we want to develop citizenship-related knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant for both local contexts and the European context. We have identified five key areas of civic life (political participation, stereotypes, migration, education, family roles) comprehensible to students aged 12-15. These are key areas, understanding of which and competence in are relevant for any future European citizen. We all come from countries which are newer or aspiring members of the EU and from countries whose citizens migrate a lot across Europe and the world. We want to make our students able to understand their own society as well as other European societies and allow them to function in other societies as well as in their own.

In this project we organize diverse activities that will allow our students to practice:
interacting effectively and constructively with others, thinking critically, acting in a socially responsible manner, acting democratically.

There are three kinds of activities that help us achieve that:

1) research of major social changes in the four topics (Political Participation, Stereotypes, Migration, Education, Family Roles) from 1960 onwards

2) topic-related actions in the local community that promote democracy, equality, tolerance, solidarity

3) students’ interaction and discussion on social issues relevant to the topic.

Our participants are students aged 12-15. There are over 1000 students of that age involved in the project. Apart from the local activities they will participate in, we also plan Learning/Teaching/Training activities in which 100 students will be involved. During the LTT activities, students will reinforce the knowledge, skills and attitude they will have acquired in local activities, and they will experience operating in a multicultural
environment, the kind of we are preparing them for in this project. Each school is the leader of one topic’s activities, and the LTT activity in their school will be directly related to their topic.
The methodology applied in this project involves: lectures and workshops by non-governmental organizations, institutions and organizations, firsthand accounts of experiences from persons who witnessed the social processes from 1960 onwards; students’ own research on the five topics;
brochures, quizzes, newspaper articles, videos, plays, drawings, reviews, reports and comics students will share and prepare for their peers; direct interaction between students and discussions on relevant social issues researched before.

The project will have far-reaching impact: on students, who will understand their political rights and obligations, question the practice of stereotyping, understand the causes of migration and empathize with refugees, appreciate their education, question typical family roles and gender stereotypes;
on teachers, who will improve their teaching practices; parents and families, who will be culturally enriched by interacting with students from other countries; the local community, which will reconnect through mutual solidarity actions; European schools and teachers, who will participate in our project through eTwinning events, will have access to our public Twinspace and the digital and paperback citizenship education handbook the involved teachers will produce and publish with all the other materials on
Erasmus+ Project Results Platform.

All the project results will be published on the project website, Twinspace and the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform