Although our students are provided with quite high quality formal education, we often find they are not adequately prepared to handle and solve the challenges of nowadays because the skills relevant to the demands of our society aren‘t often covered by the traditional lessons and classes. Sometimes there is a significant “skills mismatch“ between the competences the students need to succeed for the personal and professional success in the future life and those they actually possess. All the partners of our Project, five schools from Lithuania, Latvia, Turkey, Portugal and Poland, are focused on the growing active and productive members of their communities and providing them with the supportive atmosphere. We, teachers and educators, look for the new attractive teaching methods and techniques which would help us to meet the students‘ needs and build their key skills and competences. The main goal of this project is to provide appropriate opportunities for the students, their families and other community members to experience and practice life skills, to inculcate them into day to day practice so that it can last with them for their life time. The activities of our Project combine improving the life skills with the learning through the Arts. We focus on such arts areas as music, drama, painting and photography asserting that practices in those fields lead and support most interpersonal skills and deal with the conflicts, provide self-confidence and social tolerance, and show positive effects on other processes. Learning through the arts involves children and adults from the different social and cultural backgrounds and creates equal opportunities for all students including those from the disadvantaged groups. We believe that the general effects of such a Project mention a development of cognitive, social and personal competences for all the participants. We‘ll use a wide range of the methods and approaches such as peer and group learning, classes for the students of mixed ages, experimenting, guided, focused and free exploration, modeling, simulation and visualization, role play, discussions, and conferences. Carrying out the activities of the Project we expect to create and prepare the brochures related to the teaching life skills through four fields of our project: music, drawing, painting and crafts, drama and creative dramatics,and photography and video making. They will contain the descriptions of the teaching techniques, lesson plans, practical exercises, scripts and photos of the students’ works. The brochures will be prepared in paper and digital formal and spread among the learning community on local, regional, national and international levels sharing the best practices and experiences. One of the outputs of our project will also be the photo album “The world seen through the children eyes.” containing the social, street and nature photographies taken by the students . We expect that our students will develop a wide range of leadership skills. The students will improve the skills and abilities to work well with others and step forward to lead with the new ideas and initiatives. In a long time perspective our students will take on big issues and address them in a meaningful way that will have an impact on the world outside the classroom. The students as well as other participants will develop healthy work habits of doing the job in time, respecting the contribution of others and putting the efforts into the success of the final piece. Because most arts disciplines are collaborative in nature , the participants practice working together, sharing responsibilities and compromising with others to accomplish a common goal. The students will learn that a constructive feedback is a part of learning and it isn‘t anything to be offended by or to be taken personally. The evaluation is incorporated in every step of the process in the learning through the arts ensuring that critique is a valuable experience and greatly contributes to the success of the final piece.We believe that our Project matches the real needs of the teaching staff as well as needs of the students and other educators on local, national and international levels, and its results and outputs such as practical guidelines for the workshops and trainings, teaching techniques, lesson plans, descriptions of the exercises to teach and learn life skills through the arts, will be used and exploited continuously after the end of the Project.

Education should be a tool to overcome inequalities from which individuals within society set out. This has been our main motivation in our latest international projects in which we have worked on conflict resolution issues. Our aim in this new project is to tackle gender inequality from different perspectives, promoting the integration of women with equal opportunities in all areas of society. To achieve this goal, the project involves four secondary schools from Spain, Turkey, Romania and Poland. It is explained in detail the number of active participants during the whole project, in each mobility and, besides, how the school communities are going to be joined.The motivation of this project arises from a survey on equality conducted by the participating schools. It has been noted in it that the answers were related to the gender of the respondents (choice of school subjects, way of occupying the leisure-time places, choice of extracurricular activities or professional careers). In addition, the partner schools have analysed the lack of visibility in our curricula, in our environments, in the students view of their teachers or the use of language. The conclusions drawn from this survey have made us see that the main priority of this project is Social Inclusion, as we think we must ensure that women can achieve equal opportunities in every realm of society. At the same time, the teachers profiles will be enhanced, improving the training of the participating professionals and, finally, through the activities planned the competences of all the participants will be strengthened.The stated objectives imply creating a Gender Equality Observatory in each school; carrying out training activities that set the grounds of a greater awareness with regard to equality and women visibility, respect and stereotypes; encouraging experiences and opportunities for students close to social exclusion and their teachers; fostering the use of foreign languages; raising the school communities’ awareness of the importance of the chosen subject; collaborating with local institutions that work on gender equality and promoting collaborative methodologies. To get all this a set of activities are suggested; they will begin with a basic training course about equality for teachers -C1- and four mobilities/short-term exchanges with students with these contents: visibility, respect, stereotypes and equality, in such a way as to favour an inclusive and egalitarian education –C2, C3, C4 y C5. Within the previous and subsequent activities as well as those done during the mobilities, workshops for students, families and teacher will be carried out, educational materials which disseminate the contents included and improve the competences of all the participants will be created, and the expected project results will also be disseminated: development of four Equality Plans adapted to the legislation and reality of each school, implementing the four Gender Equality Observatories and creation of teaching material – at least 12 Didactic Units in open format enabling the development of a subject on Equality once the project was finished.To ensure a wider reach of this project in each of the schools, we will develop an eTwinning project with a group of academically disadvantaged students at the same time. Hence, apart from disseminating all the materials developed in Twinspaces, specific workshops with similar contents for both projects will be set.The impact will be registered in the ongoing Quality Plan, with objective quantitative and qualitative indicators that show its real significance. A great impact is expected in the schools as well as locally, regionally and internationally, on the basis of the different actions that will change the functioning of the schools –above all the Observatory and the Equality Plan- and to this aim the training of the students, teachers and families, who are expected to be more involved in the school activities, will be improved. The relations among the schools and institutions nearby will be strengthened, apart from promoting the relation with other schools to disseminate the results through the use of different social networks.To ensure that the project continues, a Sustainability Plan including all the long-term actions will be written: functioning of the Gender Equality Observatories, integration of each Equality Plan and use of the teaching units, either as part of the regular subjects or creating a new specific one on equality or including them into the complementary training carried out in the schools.

"Five European secondary schools from Denmark,France, Poland, Italy and Spain with very different realities:”Kerteminde 10. klasse center” in Denmark is a 10th grade center (KTM10) part of a youth center and has four main classrooms and also a range of different classrooms such as a school kitchen for cooking class , a physics room, a crafting room and a music studio. They have about 76 students of 15 – 18 years of age (12 of them are refugees) and the number of permanent teaching staff is 7. “Lycée Jean Aicard” in France is a state secondary school located in the south of France, with one section of CLIL in the subject area of History in the Spanish language. It is called the Euro section. The Lycée Jean Aicard welcomes 1,350 pupils and students in general sections like Sciences, Humanities and Economics and also in technological sections such as Management, or Health and Social Studies. There are about 100 teachers.” Istituti Vinci of Ateneo Group” in Italy is an upper secondary education school (14-19 years old) in the region of Lombardy with two study fields: a technical school of transport and logistics (founded in 1992), specializing in airplane conduction (aviation), and a linguistic high school (founded in 1988). The institute has two branches, one in Gallarate and the other in Varese, with a total number of 29 teachers and about 220 students. “Gminne Centrum Edukacji in Wawrzeńczyce” in Poland is a secondary school situated in a rural area, 25 km from Cracow. There are 120 students aged 13-16 and 20 teachers. The school is a part of a group of schools which also include a kindergarten and a primary school, they are all managed by the same headmistress. The school provides general education, the languages taught are English as first foreign language and German, the second. English is taught from the kindergarten and German is introduced in the secondary school, at the age of 13. “Instituto de Educación Secundaria Profesor Juan Pulido Castro” is the coordinator country and is a state secondary school which offers compulsory secondary education, baccalaureate and vocational training, located in the downtown of Telde, a region of 100 Km2 and 100000 inhabitants in the east of the island of Gran Canaria (The Canary Islands, Spain). The centre has got 740 students from 12 to 18 years old, 58 teachers and 4 non-teaching staff. We teach English as the first foreign language and French as second foreign language .These five countries joined to make a two-year project as a strategic partnerships for the exchange of good practices related to the use of ICT tools (tablets, digital books) and ICT supported learning applications and the name of the proyect was ""MY DIGITAL SCHOOL BAG”.The main objectives were to promote the European awareness increase for the secondary school and its whole community: teachers, students and parents, to promote the developing of the cross-curricular key competences (learning to learn, entrepreneurship, learning autonomy), particularly in the first (English) and second (French) foreign language competence in a European learning context, to improve the professional competences of the teachers in the field of ICT and bilingual teaching (CLIL project) in order to face the growing demand for a more innovate methodology, to know other european educational systems and their experiences as regards the integration of ICT tools and resources in their contents and to promote the implementation of innovate teaching strategies, especially focused on foreign language learning and bilingual projects, intended to improve the motivation and marks of the students. The number of students participated in this proyect were 64 aged of 15-16 years old.We decided this ages because they had some experience regarding the CLIL project and a more mature use of new technologies. Besides, they were less dependent from their parents. The number of teachers involved in this proyect were 30. They were profil were teachers engaged in various educational projects and interested in collaborate in the international opening of their centers. Some of them were key persons with an extensive career and in charge of demanding responsibilities, but still willing to learn and share.The activities were mainly based on the chance to have a real encounter with other European students and teachers in a different and more stimulating learning environment in order to work together. On the other hand, they promoted the cultural exchange, they shared experiences and knowledge, the self-confidence of pupils and the possibility of making new friends. For teachers, was a chance to strengthen links between colleagues and other European secondary schools. The activities also promoted the real exchange of good practices and teaching skills. Through the attendance of teaching in English in mixed classes during mobilities, studentsl experienced the value of CLIL method in an international educational environment."

"The motivation for this project is to share and implement best practices on how to build on the foundation of similarities between different nationalities to attain a higher sense of European and international citizenship amongst the students, while respecting differences in cultural heritage and personal identity. The need for this project stems from a growing nationalistic movement seen not just within the European Union, but globally. We aim to support young Europeans in achieving the understanding that international collaborations do not de facto obliterate cultural heritage or identity. Despite differences, communities - big and small - can thrive by creating a space where everyone experiences being included. The methodologies that will be used in the project are Blended Learning, soft CLIL and social inclusion. These will help working towards developing the students' 21st century skills e.g. “Social Responsibility and Cultural, Global and Environmental Awareness”, “Collaboration and Leadership” and “Lifelong Learning, Self-Direction and Personal Management”. These skills support what we aim to achieve with this project + work towards the ET 2020 set for common EU objectives to address challenges in education and training systems by 2020. The project ""Cultural heritage and social inclusion in an international optic"" includes five partner schools from Netherland, Poland, Portugal, Turkey and Denmark. The projects aims to connect three main elements: cultural heritage, social inclusion and internationalization. These optics made it important for the participants to represent a wide range of geografical, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. Since the project has a focus on creating school communities based on social inclusion method, it was also important that the participating schools differ in size and character, having vocational schools, high schools and a 10th grade centre represented. Diversity within the school communities also differs, with some partner schools having a great deal of experience with inclusion of minorities and disadvantaged students and others have a more homogenous student body. All these elements will offer an opportunity to compare local practices and developing new strategies and working procedures collectively to put to the test at partner schools. The projects aims demand active participation from both teachers and students. Teachers must implement the best practices they learn from European colleagues and evaluate on these ongoing, while students must be motivated to parttake in culture meetings with open-minded-ness and an eagerness to reflect upon own identity in both a national and international optic. The term culture meeting is defined in a fairly broad sense in this project: Because no two people are alike, the possibility of being challenged on your beliefs and view of the world are always present and therefor so is personal growth. Four of the school partners have worked together in different KA2 projects earlier on (Portugal, Poland, Turkey and Denmark) and the Dutch coordinator, Hilgo Wempe, has also worked on several KA2 projects together with the Danish school, however, with another Dutch school as the partner school. The extensive collaborative experience helps ensure a prosperous collaboration. During the project four physical mobilities will take place with 2 teachers and 6 students (aged 15-17) from each partner participating. Every physical mobility will be supported by workshops in the project's Twinspace group and virtual meetings in Twinspace - Online Meetings beforehand. The topics of the physical mobilities are the basis of communities seen across the world: History&cultural heritage, music, performance & folklore, food&art and lastly nature&human life. These topics should give the students a possibility to see that no matter how many differences they see in each other, they will always be able to connect on several interfaces, helping to break down stereotypes. During each physical mobility all partners will contribute actively to the content by sharing from their home country about the week's topic. Two teacher trainings are included in the project (one in each school year) to ensure sharing of best practices as well as knowledge obtained during Erasmus+ KA1 funded courses on cultural heritage and social inclusion, that can be implemented throughout the project. Twinspace will also be use to communicate, organize, dividing of tasks and ongoing evaluations. A handbook for teachers about best practices will be assembled and uploaded to the Project Results Platform at the end of the project. The longterm results of this project are expected to be seen in the way the partner schools will keep working on creating openminded and tolerant communities with their future student bodies. For the participating students the aim is for them to learn from this project that investing in both national and international communities is possible and a positive."

"The project "" Budd.E.R.S. "" is thought to center the issues of lifelong learning and entrepreneurial education while representing a strategic tool to fight early living and education failure: the proposal is based on the assumption that schools should train students to move around the world and the various difficulties of life, first of all research and job creation . Being able to reinvent , recycle, re-orient all along the student's life is a key skill that a school cannot refrain from transmitting . Budd.E.R.S. proposes to organize an integrated training system that can offer to the students the opportunity to enter the lifelong learning system, to get directly in touch with the job market, enabling them to realize their potential and skills and better understand their interests and limitations, developing skills learning from practical experience and learning to communicate and work in an international team . In addition, it aims to build an orientation on job search based on analysis capabilities and motivations, to overcome the traditional methods of teaching and guiding young people in the acquisition of autonomy and capacity , starting from concrete facts , restructuring the educational teaching techniques .The project lasts 24 months and involves 8 European countries ( Italy , Germany, Denmark , Poland, Romania , Bulgaria , Turkey, France ) for a total of 240 students aged between 13 and 19 years and 23 teachers in 4 main activities :- Analysis of propensities and attitudes towards entrepreneurship ;- Analysis of the socio-economic context , research of business opportunities and definition of the business idea ;- Lifelong Guidance- Drawing up business plans, business creation "" in the lab,"" business game .In order to achieve its objectives , Budd.E.R.S. provides 5 coordination meetings between teachers and one short-term mobility of students that will be held in Milan in September 2015 during EXPO : the promoters have felt it was important to seize the invaluable learning opportunity provided by the International Exposure organizing a week of activities in the heart of the international business community that an event of this scope inevitably creates around him. Three output products will be created: a storyboard handbook , a study on methodologies and statistical analysis of the data collected , a portfolio of skills acquired by students during the activities that will also serve as certification together with the Europass documents .The project will have an impact on students, teachers and stakeholders. Students directly involved in the project will develop new social skills and communication, accountability, resourcefulness, flexibility, stress management, problem solving, team work , flexibility, awareness of their strengths and limitations , programming skills and management, hospitality and tolerance towards different cultures in a true perspective of creating the ""European citizen "" . The project will have a fundamental impact on the creation of a new generation of entrepreneurs which implies that , in a not too distant future , a greater capacity for the entire Europe to get out of the crisis will be built, by creating jobs and stimulating innovation and competitiveness. Teachers will become familiar with innovative teaching methodologies , integrated at the European level , based on a massive use of web-based technologies and techniques of non-formal learning ( learning by doing , and cooperative learning ) . Stakeholders and policy-makers will be sensitized to the understanding of the importance of the use of the non-formal learning methods , innovative learning pathways , a student-oriented approach , in order to open scenarios of support from the local authorities' to other initiatives aimed at testing , developping or replicating project about entrepreneurial education of the students.Budd.E.R.S. aims to produce long-lasting results on the cultural approach that both students as teachers adopt in their relationship with the job market and teaching techniques . Participation in the activities planned will take effect , hopefully , throughout the life of the students on their ability to get involved, to reinvent , to be flexible to the needs of the labor market and better prepared to face the challenges of life as well as respect for diversity and integration of the other, and in the awareness of the importance of being active European citizens ."