Project Meetings

Meeting in Reykjavik,  Iceland, 22 March - 28 March 2026

We spend a wonderful week in Reykjavik in terms of Storytelling - a Way to Wellbeing.   Please, follow the link below and read in details!

Iceland diary

Nordplus Meeting in Copenhagen, September 2025 

Students’ active role and participation in the Nordplus Meeting 

From the beginning, it has been crucial to the Danish team that the students play an active role in the Nordplus project – including the creating of the Nordplus Meeting in Denmark. Therefore, we had quite a lot of talks before our meeting here in Denmark, where students and teachers participated on equal terms in the creation of a program for the week in Copenhagen.  

A lot of ideas came up during these talks – some ideas were crazy, some ideas were more traditional, and a couple of ideas could not be realized – but the main reason was to give our students a feeling of responsibility and co-determination for the meeting.  

In the following, you can read what came out of this decision. 

Focus points for the Danish Nordplus meeting 

What is ‘hygge’? Is it candles? Campfire? Sweaters? Sweets? Wollen socks? Christmas traditions? Creative activities? A relaxed attitude towards life? Good times... 

Difficult to define exactly what ‘hygge’ is, but our students gave it a shot and presented the concept of hygge on day 1.... and we tried to fill the program for the week with examples of hygge. 

‘Hygge’ plays a huge role in Danish culture in general – and of course at our school as well. And the presence of hygge is often connected to well-being. 

We started the week in Copenhagen with icebreakers, social activities, sport games in the parc, and during the week, the Finnish, Lithuanian and Icelandic students and teachers were invited to creative classes, such as drama class, art, music and sports. 

One of the top events of the week was the theatre play Vilde Kaniner at Østre Gasværk Theatre. Before going to the play, we had an inspiring music workshop with gospel singer and music teacher Rie Hagbart, singing songs from the play Vilde Kaniner, so that students and teachers were familiar with the play. 

Meeting in Kaunas, Lithuania 31 March - 4 April 2024

Teachers and students of participating schools from Denmark, Iceland and Finland visit Kaunas.

Getting started and making friends

We started our week with a fun bingo game to help everyone get to know each other. After that we introduced the main project for the week: creating social media content to support emotional well-being. We organized the students into four groups, with each group having a different task (event recording, writing, content creation, and editing). During the week we understood that students needed more support for implementing the task. So there is still a room to improve.

Our second group activity was baking an apple cake together. While the cake was in the oven, the groups held their first workshop - "Who’s in Control—Me or Social Media?". We all finished by enjoying the delicious cake that students made.

Culture, creativity & technology

During the week students visited the museum at our school. The local students gave a great presentation about Ugnė Karvelis, an important person in Lithuanian culture and ended with a fun quiz. Afterwards, students from all the countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Lithuania) gave presentations about their own schools and countries.

Later, students had a STEAM workshop where they learned about 3D printing and wind energy. We then continued with the workshop that started before and focused on discussion how social media apps keep our attention.

To see more of the area, we invited visiting students and teachers to explored the city of Kaunas using the ActionBound app. This turned our city tour into an interactive scavenger hunt, where our international teams worked together to complete fun challenges.

Art, fun and local experiences

One of the mornings participants of the project were able to participate in an incredible Virtual Reality (VR) experience called "Trail of Angels". This experience allowed everyone to travel through the famous paintings of Lithuanian artist M. K. Čiurlionis whos 150th birthday is celebrated through 2025 in the whole country. Inspired by his art, we then had a charcoal drawing workshop where everyone created their own artwork. This day we also continued and finished with the social media workshop by discussing different situations and thinking of ways to solve problems related to social media use.

For relaxation, during the week participants visited a local swimming pool with saunas and hot tubs. They were also able to take a trip to the Tadas Ivanauskas Museum of Zoology to learn about Lithuania's native wildlife. In the evening, everyone felt the local excitement at a thrilling basketball game, where the home team, Žalgiris, won in front of 15,000 fans.

We finished the week by teaching and performing traditional Lithuanian folk dances and songs together while enjoying local cuisine and having some snacks.

Meeting in Kitee, Finland 30 September - 4 October 2024

Arppe school organized the first meeting of our Nordplus project in Kitee. Students and teachers from all the participating schools attended.

We spent the first day of the visit getting to know Arppe school. The visitors had the opportunity to observe regular classes. The teachers held an official project meeting, which included presentations about the Finnish school system and Kitee. Additionally, we planned project activities for the academic year.

On Tuesday morning we had physical activities. Kitee upper secondary school’s physical education teacher organized a baseball school, which all the guests and host students participated in. After this, we had a joint event with Arppe school and Kitee upper secondary school, where we presented our project to all the students. The students from the partner schools introduced themselves and their schools too.

On Wednesday, we organized a wellness workshop where students brainstormed how schools could better promote well-being and compared the good and bad practices of their schools. The students suggested more effective use of social media to promote well-being – the school could share engaging and activating content on social media.

A local newspaper reporter visited the workshop and interviewed both the students and the teachers. Koti-Karjala will publish an article about our Nordplus meeting in the near future.

On Wednesday, two of our school's teachers and our guests visited Hepovaara horse farm. At the horse farm, they learned how horse care can be used to promote well-being.

Thursday's theme was nature and well-being. We took a day trip to the Muljula wilderness and game trail. There were check points set up in the Muljula forest and by the shore. We enjoyed meals by the campfire outdoors.

On Friday, we visited the local Exhibition Center and the Nightwish Museum. After school lunch, we had a concert and farewell event at the Kitee Hall.

Preparatory meeting in Kitee, Finland autumn 2023