Project Introduction

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    The presented project ‚My involvement as a European with refugee children’ brings together four schools from Germany, Greece, Croatia and France with the intent of tackling the currently pressing situation of refugee families entering Europe in search for safety and a better life. The related challenge of fully including refugee children into society requires to prepare European students for this change within their school environment. In order to create an open and welcoming school culture that defines inclusion as implicit, the project aims at fostering and enhancing the intercultural competence of students across all grades. Therefore, we plan on conducting four intercultural workshop sessions with the support of an external intercultural trainer over the course of two years.

    Thereby, the four schools will take turns in hosting the transnational student teams. After successfully completing one session, the participating students will then take the role of intercultural ambassadors at their respective schools by transmitting their newly acquired knowledge and skills to their schoolmates.

    In addition, the material that has been collected during the workshop sessions will be made available to all teachers in order to be included into their educational work. In order to further enhance the reflection between the workshop sessions about what is their own and the other culture, students independently work on raising awareness about refugee children by initiating diverse activities, researching the situation of refugee children in their respective societies, and reflecting upon social and political discourses. Thereby, students are given space to come up with their own ideas. Initial ideas include storytelling, photo collages, simulations, role games, theater plays, song collections, etc. Yet, all activities are intended to work towards the objective of establishing an open, inclusive and welcoming school culture that encourages students, teachers and parents to take a cosmopolitan and value-based attitude and to collectively and appropriately manage the changing school environment.

    An e-Twinning platform will be used by all partner schools to present, discuss and evaluate conducted activities, which also gives impulses and inspiration for further activities.

    Moreover, different situations of refugee children in the four countries will be discussed in order to deduce conclusions defining collective awareness and action in line with European values. By strengthening the students’ intercultural competence, they will be enabled to take value-based decisions and find appropriate solutions beyond cultural differences. Finally, we expect the project to have a positive impact on the students’ families, friends and hence, their society through a knock-on effect of this positive behavior.