"The constant influx of refugees caused dramatic and fundamental changes in socio cultural, political, economic as well as educational landscape of the European Union. Therefore, European values such as tolerance and solidarity were put under stress as racial and xenophobic attitudes towards refugees among Europeans seem to prevail. Being aware of the complexity of the problem, we had formed a team for Erasmus + Project, under the title ""Refugees Matter: from Challenges to Opportunities"", consisting of 7 European countries, such as Lithuania, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and two schools from Turkey. At the initial stage of the project Greece refused to further participate in it, so ,consequently, 6 teams from five countries addressed the following objectives of the project: • form an open and balanced perception of refugees and their cultures through research, analysis, counter narratives, intellectual dialogue, and direct encounters; • transfer, share and gain good experiences as well as useful and manageable practices regarding social inclusion of refugees and the way host countries accept and treat them; • focus on such competencies as social and civic responsibilities, a sense of initiative and leadership, cultural awareness and creativity, digital competence, and English language skills. The project, included 140 core participants (50 teachers, school staff and 90 students, aged 16-19, directly participating in transnational meetings and students learning/teaching/training activities) and more than 400 participants (family members, local authorities, refugees, politicians, etc.) involved into the process of the Project implementation. The project took the holistic approach that encouraged students to form balanced views on refugee crisis. All the activities of the project were interrelated since they aimed to analyze the project problem of refugee treatment from different angles, starting with the insight into national history related to migration, then focusing on analysis of the current situation of the issues related to refugees and reasons of migration. The activities carried out consisted of: creating project team and tools; online logo, poster, motto competition; Interpretive reading, the aim was to integrate the English language skills and knowledge of national history; short documentary film competition to understand refugee experience, the difficulties they were facing in a foreign environment; Movie night followed by a discussion with a person(s) directly related with the Project topic; Volunteering - students gained practical experience when working with refugees; Photography exhibition increased awareness about the project of all interested parties; Preparing final works - E-book was created at the end of the project and it includes photos, activity descriptions and reports and other significant project information; Dissemination activities with the aim to highlight the potential value of the project as well as help spread the information to other interested parties . Three students learning/teaching/training sessions were carried out. They comprised the following: conference on ""Refugee issues in Europe""; workshop on debates under the motion: ""The EU is losing at its attempts to integrate refugees"" together with European Parliament Simulation to discuss refugee integration mechanisms; Cultural week focusing on cultural aspects of refugees through folklore, handicrafts, food and customs. Project activity management methodology was developed to ensure that the project is disciplined, well managed and the quality of the results secured. The methods to be applied during the project were: survey, observation, checklist, reflection, and interview. Participation in the project activities promoted critical thinking, initiative, and leadership as well as strengthened English language skills. The project result was a change in the refugee perception, from prevailing xenophobic and stereotypical attitudes to more tolerant and emphatic. All the activities motivated students and prepared them for further actions in their communities concerning elimination of racial attitudes. European dimension regarding the main European values such as solidarity and respect to diversity and multiculturalism were strengthened. The whole desired impact of the project covered all the levels of scope starting from local to international, that was, to reach positive changes towards treatment of refugees and migrants as much as possible. The acquired knowledge and experience encouraged the participants to become active problem solvers instead of passive situation observers in all possible levels. Being greatly significant, sustainable activities will futher be organized in the form of inter local school projects, conferences, continuous volunteering, good practice incorporation into the curricula."

"The Project ""Our Heritage: Where the Past Meets the Future"" was implemented by a partnership consisting of five secondary schools from different European countries: Estonia, Turkey, Holland, Crotia and Czech Republic. All of them are state general education schools. Most of them are UNESCO associated schools and experts in implementing art and culture in general education. 2018 is the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH). Cultural heritage became an EU priority with the European Agenda for Culture in 2007. By means of this special year, we wanted to carry out this project to increase the importance of art and culture education at schools, to draw attention to cultural heritage that brings communities together. Our project's context is art-culture, cultural heritage, the implementation of 21st century students' skills into general, art and culture education at schools. The project was community-centered. By collaboration with various local institutions and informal groups of people, we tried to enhance the local social capital in our city and make it a better place to live. The project offered an extremely stimulating and developing experience for the students that can change their attitudes and perception of the world, influence their life choices, give them the drive to pursue their aims, bring out their hidden skills, help them to become active and conscious members of their local communities, nations and truly European citizens. It was a two-year project. We carried out 4 LTT activities. We had to deal with various forms of art and culture such as traditional dance, songs, poetry, cuision, drama, film, photo, ceremony, clothing, customs, visual arts and using them to trigger and develop artistic-cultural perspective of students, to help them enriching and bringing out their hidden 21st Century skills. By using non-academic activities of artistic creation we wanted to attract the high intelligence students who don't have time to bring out their skills or the students who don't want to participate in social activities or who see art and culture unnecessary because of the technological development, who are marginalised at school , who have domestic-economic problems and give them a chance to feel important, build their personality and self-confidence. Moreover, working together with representatives of other nations' art and culture institutions we tried to raise awareness of linguistic, artistic and cultural diversity of Europe. We have created joint end products: the logo of the project, the project anthem, a cookbook, a film showing students of all partner schools folk or modern dances, a photo album presenting cultural heritage music instruments and DVD accompanied with their music, a photo album showing different culture feature, an art album. To achieve objectives of our project, we did various kinds of activities, such as workshops, competitions, exhibitions, evaluations... that other institutions like other schools in our localities, art and culture centres, music schools, cinemas, amateur theatres, dance groups, music bands, children homes, old people homes could also take part in. The activities are aimed not only to create the end products, but also to form attitudes of entrepreneurship and leadership, teach teamwork skills, perform well in new situations, cooperate with people of different backgrounds, develop 21st century students skills, develop foreign language skill, form resources for UNESCO, learn new teaching methods, form a sense of national identity by attending lessons in museums, art galleries and other cultural institutions. Project-based learning, live and learn (learning through experience model), individual model, social interaction model, Evaluation methods, Enquiry-based learning approach, Question-answer, Discussion, Brainstorming, Hands-on method, Place-based education to ensure active involvement of the students in the activities are methodologies while we were implementing the project. The project is student-centered, the students took an active part in all project activities at all stages from preparation to evaluation, dissemination of its results and teachers only guided them . We have uploaded all the tangible project results to the school websites, the joint project website and to the European database - in national languages and English, so that people all over the world interested in them can download them and use them free of charge."