“My Europe – Your Europe – Your Say”(ME-YOU-US) project resulted from the joint expertise and experience of like-minded organizations from different sectors of education who believe that every individual is unique, equally worthy and has the right to live according to their beliefs, customs, practices and established behavior rules. Europe is quite different compared to what it used to be some 5 years ago. Globalization and migration have brought together people from different ethnic origins, religious backgrounds, beliefs, traditions and languages. However, sharing a common space does not automatically result in overcoming the boundaries of historically constituted communities; it does not necessarily involve opening yourself to otherness. It even resulted in the opposite: nationalistic and xenophobic political parties have been emerging and gaining public support in many EU countries, with the six partner countries included.
Considering the latest events and development trends in Europe we came up with the idea of launching a project that will provide support to educators in their mission to teach students to live with the new realities in Europe, not only to accept the diversity of people and concepts, but to value it as an opportunity through which we can learn from one another in order to build stronger, more dynamic societies.
The ME-YOU-US project aims at teaching students aged 11 to 14 to be more open-minded, more tolerant and empathic, learn about universal human rights and get skills and habits of living and acting in communities in which people feel valued and accepted, they know their rights and obligations as citizens. To achieve this objective we will provide support for our second major target group – the teachers. They will have access to a handbook with activities descriptions and numerous attractive e-resources (Resource Pack for teachers) and will be trained to acquire the skills to deliver trainings with their students making use of the Resource Pack.
A project website will be designed and regularly updates in 7 languages (English, and the partners’ mother tongues). All intellectual outputs will be freely available on the website in the respective language version.
The implementation phase of the project will involve some 7200 students from Poland, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal and Greece in trainings making use of the Resource Pack and the e-resources. The students in the ME-YOU-US project will take part in regular training activities during the two school years (2019/20 and 2020/21) on a monthly basis.
