Youth unemployment is an European problem, where 5.2 millions of teenagers make their first decisions wtih an impact on their future life. Most of them regard education as not useful at all as leading them to quit studying and abandon school. Those two issues will be the leitmotifs to be understood and respected. In this context, school should have an important role in developing non formal and informal learning giving expression to multiculturalist attitudes and the construction of personal fulfillment. To help teens make wise and fruitful decisions concerning their lives, we would like to involve students from our schools into the pan-European project called “Empower students with entrepreneurial skills ”. This project emphasises the build of ‘skills for the 21st century’, develop transversal skills such as entrepreneurship and highlights ‘the ability to think critically, take initiative, problem solving and work collaboratively’. These ‘entrepreneurial skills’ should be given particular attention, since they not only help to achieve concrete entrepreneurial activity, but also enhance the employability of young people in each partner´s country and in any European country. The priorities addressed by our project are: (i) Promoting the take-up of practical entrepreneurial experiences in education, training and youth work and (ii) Improving the attainment of young people, particularly those at risk of early school leaving which will be developed by seven schools in seven diverse countries – Portugal, France, England, Italy, Romania, Poland and Finland – whose learning and teaching profiles are different. So we defined four main key-Competences: (i) Raising awareness of cultural and geographical heritage of our regions; (ii) Getting to know the products´ features related to each region’s natural environment; (iii) Becoming acquainted with the local range of industrial, commercial and handicraft associations; (iv) Developing ‘the ability to think critically, take initiative, problem solving and work collaboratively’ through creative entrepreneurship workshops. We believe that the most relevant topics our project deal with are the following: 1) Entrepreneurial learning - entrepreneurship education, 2) Creativity and culture and 3) ICT - new technologies - digital competences. To achieve them we established a mix methodology to develop this project Action-Research. This framework allows us to carry out the project into three action-cycles. Each cycle is strictly related to the going up of the project in the beginning of each new year. Thus we decided to have three transnational project meetings, attended only by school coordinators. To measure the quality of the project we will use different tools to collect data such as questionnaires, surveys and focus group targeted to students, parents, teachers and local community. The main results expected are: (i) Exhibitions of students works concerning to the past and present of their regions for different economic sectors and creativity and entrepreneurship; (ii) Reports on the attitude of students to entrepreneurial activities, the importance of formal education and their needs; (iii) Films, publicity spots, presentations, models, photo albums and posters on the perspectives and news ideas of students in relation to regional development of products or particular economic sectors in their region; (iv) Website for other schools from our areas giving them information on how they can implement similar activities in their schools; (v) Form a group of students and teachers to present/share their knowledge in regional and national schools. As far as dissemination of the project the target groups will be students from different European schools, parents and community since being an entrepreneur in education also involves knowledge and share of good practices at national and international level. School websites, school papers, bulletin boards, exhibitions in school halls, libraries and others areas; Facebook, Etwinning and blogs, will be the internal and external privileged channels used to disseminate the project outcomes, whose the responsible for this phase of the project are the coordinators of each school partner. At the end of the project we look forward to fostering the impact on key-Competences gained by:1. students – independence, discipline, creativity, tolerance and team work skills, creativity and entrepreneurship; Language development and ICT literacy; 2. teachers – language and ICT improvements, team work and problem solving techniques; 3. community – improving cooperation with students’ parents, local authorities and other institutions and enhancing school prestige and popularity;4. school partners – cooperation, experience, motivation and opportunity to exchange professional experience and good practices.

"KA 2 ""THE GREEN SCHOOLS"" PROJECTThe 21st century has been called the ""century of the environment."" Schools-and individual citizens - can no longer assume that social challenges such as pollution, dwindling natural resources and climate change can be set aside for future generations.The Green schools Project is an European project designed to encourage and acknowledge whole school action for the environment. The Green schools offers a well defined controllable way for partner schools to take environmental issues from the curriculum and apply them to the day to day running of the school. This process helps pupils recognize the importance of environmental issues and take them more seriously in their personal and home lives.The Green Schools aims to Improve the school environment • Reduce litter & waste • Reduce fuel and electricity bills • Increase environmental awareness • Involve the local community • Gain local publicity • Create links with partner schools The Green Schools aims to use a ""Four Pillars"" framework that integrates efforts to reduce schools' ecological footprints, make school environments healthier, and get the whole community thinking about solutions to the problems we face. Schools have the potential to make positive, tangible environmental change in the world while teaching students to be stewards of their communities, the earth and its resources.The Green School will give a tremendous opportunity to teach students about ecological sustainability, environmental health and nutrition; meet ICT , science and social studies standards; integrate environmental education into curricula; and support students to become leaders in making their own school a healthier and more ecologically friendly place. The Green schools provides an extremely cost-effective way to enhance the student learning and health abilities, reduce operational costs and environmental impacts of the schools, and increase a community’s overall quality and competitiveness. Our project will support teachers and our students from 4 different schools, 4 different countries across Europe to combine civic and environmental education inside our classrooms with learning experiences outside the classroom. Green School Project will improve the health and energy-efficiency of the school facility, ensure science-based environmental and civic education in the classroom, implements healthy food choices into the cafeteria, promotes alternative means of transportation, and expands recreational choices and opportunities for all students.We believe in creating personal responsibility for the environment among students around Europe to promote a more democratically active citizen. Working from the ground up, The Green Schools empowers teachers and students to remedy specific environmental concerns in their schools and communities with demonstrable outcomes and results. Teachers, parents, and students have the ability to help our schools become more sustainable. School managers can monitor their energy use. Teachers can promote environmental education in our classroom curriculum. Parents can propose more sustainable practices- like using green cleaning products- at school board meetings. Students can start re-use and recycling programs to help reduce waste.Ka2 Projesi “Yeşil Okullar”21. yüzyıl, Çevre Yüzyılı olarak ta adlandırılmaktadır. Okullar-ve bireyler- kirlilik, doğal kaynakların azalması ve iklim değişikliği gibi sosyal değişimlerin gelecek nesiller için bir kenara konulup, yok farz edilmesini daha fazla sürdüremez durumdadır.Yeşil Okullar bütün okul etkinliklerinde okulu çevre konusunda şekillendirmek ve bilgilendirmek amacıyla yapılmış bir Avrupa projesidir. Yeşil Okullar iyi tanımlanmış ve kontrol edilebilir şekilde ortak okulların müfredatlarına çevre konularının yerleştirilmesini ve okulların günlük işleyişlerinde bu konunun uygulanmasını önerir. Süreç öğrencilerin çevre konularının önemini kavramalarını sağlar ve onların kişisel ve ev yaşamlarında çevre duyarlılığını daha ciddi bir şekilde sürdürmeleri sonucuna götürür. Yeşil Okullar okul ortamında bazı gelişmeleri hedefler.• Çöp ve atığın azaltılması• Yakıt ve elektrik faturalarının azaltılması• Çevre farkındalığının artırılması• Yerel toplumu içermesi• Yerel kamuoyunun kazanılması• Ortak okullar arasında bağlantılar kurmakYeşil Okullar dört ayaklı bir çerçeveyi kullanarak öğrencilerin çevre konularında aktif olmalarının özendirilmesini, okulların çevreye bıraktıkları ekolojik ayak izlerinin azaltılmasını, okul ortamının daha sağlıklı hale getirilmesini ve tüm toplumun karşılaştığımız problemlerin çözüm yolları konularında düşünmesini sağlar. Okullar, dünyada olumlu ve somut çevre değişiklikleri yapmak için potansiyele sahiptirler, bunu öğrencilerine toplumun, dünyanın ve dünyanın kaynaklarının hizmetinde olarak yapabileceklerini öğreterek yaparlar."

According to the WHO and the UN, sustainable development should not just be included in syllabuses but must be a driver for change in behaviour. Yet, if citizens do not engage, all attempts at change and sustainable development are bound to fail. In the EU, burning issues such as climate change, rejection of political credibility that often leads to extremism, conspicuous consumption and obesity cannot be addressed by politicians alone: citizens are needed. Schools are supposed to form citizens, but change cannot be brought about by teachers just telling students what to think and young people asked to be passive. What is vitally needed is a sustainable development plan based on citizen commitment, and schools can have a great impact. Fostering Commitment in Young Europeans (FcyE) is a two-year project bringing together approximately 120 students aged 16-18 from four European high schools, situated in Germany, France, Poland and Spain. In each school, activities will be led by 5 or 6 teacher-mentors, including experienced and new educators, thereby creating a dynamic for incremental change. They will advise and teach students in weekly sessions and via social media, to encourage them to throw themselves nationally and transnationally into real-life issues—diet, mobility, consumption and a sustainable, eco-friendly environment—to commit to and drive forward necessary change. If students want to succeed they will need to work as a cohesive transnational team, which is why we have focussed heavily on improving their communication skills in English, the project language. Indeed, FcyE only has meaning as part of a Europe-wide collaboration as today’s issues can’t be solved by any single nation alone. Hope of solution must include partnership, listening to others and concessions. And thanks to best practice in each country, the transnational groups can use the talents of the many. But rather than concentrating on traditional language or even CLIL lessons, staff aim to teach practical, hands-on things like cooking, growing food, recycling clothes and waste, and looking at what seasonal produce our regions provide. Staff will engage differently with participants to find a balanced diet, fight against the pressure to buy certain products, despite heavy advertising campaigns, and indicate how plastic can be reduced, as well as highlighting the need to factor reduced mobility and transport in general into plans.The first year of the project will focus on the students and their school environment. After carrying out research as part of one of 5 specific workgroups—food, diet, recycling waste, energy and water, and clothes—students will have the chance to organise an awareness week and an evening event to sensitise students and parents to the issues they have been working on. During the second year of the project, the focus will switch to the wider community: the local area, the region and Europe as a whole. As a result, the food and diet workgroups will merge and a new fifth group created: mobility and transport. Participants will find out all that has been happening around them, by contacting, meeting and questioning locally elected representatives, companies and associations relevant to their topic, before coming up with five-year plans to address environmental, societal, health and dietary issues in their schools and local areas. Finally, participants will learn how relevant the European institutions are for their future and at the final event in Brussels, they will bring concrete proposals to the European Commission and Parliament.FcyE aims specifically to give young people a voice, a role and a whole range of competences that will help prepare them for their future studies and lives, motivating them as they realise they are learning real-life skills. Thanks to FcyE’s Individual Project Evaluation Tool (IPET) they will plot their progress in fourteen transversal and key competences for lifelong learning: confidence and maturity, organisational skills, time management, teamwork, taking initiatives, assuming responsibility, carrying out research into major issues, gaining new ICT skills, acquiring presenting and selling skills, developing video skills, honing writing skills, improving their MFL (here English), cross-cultural awareness, and devising, carrying out and interpreting surveys. By equipping them so comprehensively and enabling them to understand their power as consumers and citizens, they will be able to engage in a political dialogue with their fellow citizens. In the long run, a simplistic ‘top-down’ approach doesn’t work either at school or in politics. Our European schools should be focussed on fostering relationships of understanding, trust and commitment, not dispensing dry knowledge: the central outcome of our project will be changed individuals and a better future for our schools, local areas and Europe. This is what sustainable development is all about.

„A sound mind in a sound body – how to survive the changes in our world and be well” was a three-year-long project which was based on three main components or ‘pillars’ of physical health, mental health and healthy environment. It focused on developing initiatives that would promote young people’s social inclusion and wellbeing, the improvement of physical and psychological condition, the enhancement of healthier living habits as well as the active participation of young people in the society. The project intended to help students cope with the difficult circumstances they had to experience during the global crisis and due to current changes in lifestyles, overcome difficulties, maintain good health and mood, and be better prepared for their future role in the society. Our intention was to approach the subject in a holistic manner, showing the interdependence of all the project components. By means of different activities we were proposing, we would like our students to become the leaders of change in the attitude towards health and healthy living, giving it the right importance and shaping the view of the young generation. We particularly concentrated on mental health as a drive of change and development that makes people find their strengths, build up their self-esteem, take up challenges, start new ventures, develop and be active. It also seemed essential in building active citizenship, the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The project intended to integrate participants with physical and intellectual disabilities and learning difficulties, as well as the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds, so they felt included and not left behind, and might be the ones to learn from. The objectives of this project included learning about modern threats to our health as well as ways to be physically and mentally healthy, realizing the importance of mental health, raising the sense of personal responsibility for health and raising public awareness, reflecting on our diets, learning to live in a healthy, ecological, environmentally-friendly manner in order to ensure our safe and healthy future, getting to know each other and making friends in other countries, which we believed would lead to better understanding and responsiveness to European social, linguistic and cultural diversity. The project would also lead to the improvement of linguistic, digital and transversal skills of all the participants.The project would be carried out by the group of five partners who involved two general secondary schools with mixed-ability classes from Poland and Spain as well as three general secondary schools from Turkey, Finland and Italy. The schools’ slightly different profile served genuine integration of our disadvantaged students, among whom there are physically and intellectually disabled pupils, the ones with learning difficulties and special educational needs as well as others from disadvantaged backgrounds. We achieved significant results after the completion of the project, including improving the participants’ knowledge of the countries involved and key components of this project, raising personal and public awareness of health threats, disease prevention, importance of mental condition, wellbeing, diet, environmental problems, improving linguistic and digital competences, raising self-esteem, motivation and satisfaction. We wanted young people to build meaningful friendships based on better understanding and responsiveness to different cultures and values. Our aims were achieved through the promotion of outdoor activities and sports, cultural activities raising both awareness and wellbeing, trips and visits to nature reserves, national parks and other places of natural beauty. The project implemented the research – action methodology, thus “quiet”, scientific or explorative activities were mixed with big project and dissemination events as well as students’ short-term exchangesWe got involved in the whole range of activities, including socializing with our friends from other countries, organizing and participation in sports competitions, trips and visits to museums, galleries and historical sites. Moreover, we involved students and teachers from other schools, parents and local residents, to participate in events such as health picnics, foreign languages and cultures day, talent shows, food fairs and photo exhibitions. We produced questionnaires, surveys, quizzes, leaflets, posters and brochures, videos, a project website, facebook and blog, and a calendar. We also intended to create the curriculum for the school subject of “health”, which were later used in our schools and disseminated among other teachers. We are convinced that the project had a positive impact on its participants, partner schools, persons indirectly involved in it, who would not only gain project-related knowledge, but also develop their awareness, tolerance, and change their image for the better.