The European Heritage in the politically and culturally changing world as means to fight radicalization is the school partnership project funded by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Commission. It resulted from a successful TCA held in Germany in October 2017, in which the need for it occurred. The partnership which ran from September 2018-February 2021 composes of 5 Primary Schools:
- Primary School of Skopelos, Lesvos, Greece (coordinator)
- Szkola Podstawowa Nr 1 im. Tadeusza Kosciuszki w Mierzecicach, Poland (Partner)
- Primary School Daliou 2, Cyprus (Partner)
- Escola Básica de Apúlia, Portugal (Partner)
- Osnovna skola Jurja Sizgorica, Croatia (Partner)
Most of the participating institutions are located on the borders of Europe, experiencing the immigration crisis, phenomena of xenophobia and radical views that have challenged us to find means to redefine our sense of belonging and develop open-mindedness along with social skills. Thus, the project explores several aspects of the European Heritage, the Historical, the Industrial, the Social, the Political, the Natural and the Digital tangible and intangible heritage, in the contemporary world, which has changed drastically, and how these shared cultural assets can be used in education as means to fight radical views and to strengthen the social cohesion and resilience of societies. Our target groups were more than 200 upper-elementary students of the partner schools, but the rest of the school students as well as the wider community were also actively involved in the activities, as they were integrated in the school curriculum and there were open days, exhibitions, blog entries, presentations and workshops in which they participated. Through experiential learning techniques, blended learning and peer learning, we aimed to achieve cultural literacy, to raise awareness on the importance of preservation of the cultural heritage and active participation in social affairs with tolerance and resilience.
There were 6 LTTs to carry the project through its preparation, implementation, consolidation, evaluation and dissemination stages to keep the intercultural communication flow and to foster intercultural approaches to heritage. The project EUHARmonic 2018-1-EL01-KA229-047833_1 and its end-products have been designed to have long-term orientation purposes:
- a coursebook with the accumulated lesson plans and subproducts (posters,dvds,calendar,photos,etc),through which the project evolved, will serve as a handbook of good practices for teachers at local, regional ,transnational level
- a Fanzine(both digital and printed) in 6 issues after each LTT, where all the gained knowledge, the activities and the experiences were published
- a Cultural Heritage Thesaurus kit which was filled with realia collected during the different stages of the project, travelled with the participants in the partner schools and was formally presented to be borrowed by regional schools to exploit its content extending the impact of our project
- display areas and exhibitions not only in our schools but in public educational events
- a blog and a public Twinspace, in which the whole project is made visible in 5 languages https://euharmonicproject.blogspot.com/
- workshops, Open Day ceremonies, multiplier events especially designed to involve a big number of people in the wider community as well as policy makers and stakeholders to disseminate the intellectual outputs were realized.
- Students and teachers were awarded certificates of participation and Europass certificates.
