Project description

Nowadays many schools in most European countries face unprecedented challenges to educate children and teenagers by teaching them the added value of social empathy, kind-heartedness, brotherly love and intercultural dialogue so that they can feel the benefits of social inclusion and be able to fight against prejudice, discrimination and bullying. As "Start with Yourself" project partners, we strongly believe that schools play a critical role in helping students to learn the value of self-esteem as well as tolerance, respect and empathy, we have decided to get together and design the project. After the project SWOT analysis, we identified these common issues: students relying more on individual work techniques than collaborative approaches, students’ somehow low tolerance levels, a number of students who were victims of any type of bullying act or showed bullying-related issues and/or concerns, teachers’ will and need to share knowledge on different educational systems with other European schools as well as learn from their peers through exchanging best practice. They also showed interest in introducing and developing international European dimension in their schools curricula. We are aware of our students’ needs and the key role positive relationships and social empathy will play in their lives. By implementing this project we will be helping the participant students to develop personal and healthier social-emotional skills: empathy, trust, team work, tolerance and respect. Thus, they will be better equipped to work in teams, sharing points of views, solving problems, being creative and overcoming adversity through healthier competition. Even though competition plays a role in boosting effort-based learning, we want to emphasise the added-value of learning to work together in different settings as a way to prepare our students for further education paths and/or for the job market where team work will play a critical role in this globalised society. We have prepared a range of activities that will help students get engaged communicating, working collaboratively with their school and partnership peers. Students will be able to learn more about the importance of being flexible, kind and tolerant as well as developing social empathy and positive relationships not only at school, as students, but also in their everyday life as young proactive citizens developing their personal and national identity as well as an improved European Union awareness and democracy and valuing the rich European culltural heritage. This is a project in which students’ inner value, positive relationships and improved social empathy are top priorities. Besides, we will all work collaboratively to tackle all kinds of discrimination, stereotyping and bullying. In fact, we stronlgy believe that we will be able to improve the school culture quality, the levels of social inclusion and students’ performance by promoting their personal wellbeing and raising their self-esteem.