In the recent turmoil of European political life, seeing Brexit and the rampant rise of Euroscepticism, it has become clear for all partners that it was now time to draft a project which would emphasize on promoting a lasting sense of belonging to the European community.In order to achieve this objective, students and teachers of six schools from France, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Lithuania will, for two years, create compelling missions and entertaining challenges about the European countries to develop all together an online game which will take people on a cultural tour of what it means to be a European citizen, in an authentic, adventurous and exciting way.Students will be therefore challenged to gain knowledge on a wide range of topics: Geography, History, Folklore, Arts and Literature, Sports or activities, Citizenship : European and national institutions. The game will thus allow players to fully appreciate the importance of our cultural diversity, praise the values we Europeans all share and discover or rediscover the beauty of our common cultural heritage.

The coordinating organization 2nd Junior High School of Kalamata along with the participating ones Anne Frank Schule Linden (Germany), Taurages Ausros progimnazija (Lithuania), Scoala Gimnaziala Bautar (Romania) and Osnovna sola Strocja vas (Slovenia) tried to highlight the primary effect that values such as respect, tolerance, cooperation, mutual help and responsibility have upon the thorough development of students through the Erasmus+ project Active Student, Active Citizen. Moreover, these exact values in fact shape our identity and determine our social status, thanks to their personal, social and cultural importance. Not only do they guide us by showing what is important, good and useful, but they also motivate us, bring humanity to the surface and cultivate our inner qualities. All partners who joined our project have deeply realised that an Erasmus+ project is not merely a short-term event, but also inducement for a constant process of educational development. Within this framework, we established a close collaboration among the school community, social workers, special tutors and therapists. The participants shared both responsibility and provision, even in classroom level – teachers and students learned how to argue for topics and experiences that relate to democratic attitude. Furthermore, they commited themselves to beliefs and roles and experience different points of view. It must be pointed out that the responsible treatment of the above constitutes a high priority for us, along with the moral schooling which carefully targets certain practices and experiences.Students were involved in the following thematic areas:1.Offering help at school (peer mediation).2.Democracy and active citizenship.3.Right decision making.4.Solidarity and mutual help.Through hands-on workshops, artistic expression, role-playing games, debating, collaborating learning and case study, students experienced values, strengthened their self-confidence and learned new skills. These skills enable them to help their schoolmates/fellowmen (mediation) and also cope with difficult situations successfully (right decision making). In addition, young people are able to take a stand at school, peer groups and society, as well as join voting and decision-making procedures actively. What’s more, they understand the role of citizens in connection with political authority and distinguish fair from unfair. They realize that equality and justice constitute essential keystones of a democratic society, whereas they become conscious of other people’s experiences by taking into account moral, social and cultural parameters. In particular, the exact goals of the project, which originated from the priorities set by the coordinators (development of higher value skills and the subsequent acquisition of relevant ones, support for schools against student drop-out), were the following:1. lingual development,2. exchange of innovative practices towards offering help and solidarity,3. active students’engagement in school and social happenings.Furthermore, a new and more positive attitude on behalf of the students towards school was pursued, together with the development of those skills that will enable students to be informed about the evolution of the above values over time and be in favor of them actively for the rest of their lives.During the project mobilities, students worked together and created the following learning outcome:1. Peer mediation – a video showing the necessary steps that we must follow to implement a mediation at school.2. Democratic citizenship – the construction of a tree, the fruit of which are human rights / the planting of a tree at the school yard ofthe Anne Frank Schule in Germany as a symbolic act in favor of democracy being continuously defended by citizens.3. Right decision-making – the creation of an e-book, where students themselves offer advice concerning the making of right decisions and dealing with life dilemmas / the construction of a pyramid that puts priorities about making important decisions on scale.4. Voluntarism and solidarity – the creation of a word cloud containing words from their native languages, English and German, which refer to the above values.Long-term benefits for students:1. The ability to handle conflicts through active listening, empathy and dialogue.2. The impetus for substantial participation in democratic procedures, both in local and national level.3. The skill to make the right decisions.4. The understanding of the value that voluntarism and offering have.5. The training in offering first aid. The results of our project are available in the common website, e-Twinning and Erasmus+ platform in order to act as multipliers for other educational and civil institutions.

Since environment protection is a priority of the contemporary world, retraced in the Lisbon Strategy and then continued in the 2020 EU Strategy through the EU Environment Action Program up to 2020 and in compliance with EU educational policies, the eight schools aimed at finding the best strategies of approaching the field of environment protection at formal/non-formal level, and the joint creation of “transnational” teaching materials that could be used in any European country and that justified the necessity of this partnership. The objective of this project was to develop by multinational cooperation (exchange of good practices, use of innovative practices based on collaborative learning, critical thinking, ICT strategic use) instruments/methodologies/strategies able to facilitate teaching/learning within the long-standing education context specifically for the environment. We had these goals:1) Enhancement of ecological knowledge, abilities and formal/non-formal work competencies for 115 teachers of the nine partner schools with an aim at shaping a responsible attitude towards the environment within the educational/local communities of their origin.2) Enhancement of competencies of 375 students in identifying environmental needs and problems in the communities they belonged to and in initiating, implementing projects with the purpose of improving environment quality. 3) Development of the capacity of the 8 schools to develop an eco-civic behavior among students by cooperating with the community and the exchange of good and innovative practices. The project activities directly involved:- students with ages between 10-19 who developed their competencies in identifying/investigating environmental issues, in writing/implementing environmental projects - teachers opened towards an inter-institutional and international collaborative culture, interested in their own European environmental professional development at level- management teams of the 8 schools A teacher training curriculum, designed on environmental issues, was tested at partnership level and implemented in the eight schools. Teachers who benefited from joint training activities (on environmental issues and ICT)became training/information providers in their schools of origin. Participant meetings (teachers and students) with local partners involved in environment protection took place in order to identify, investigate local environmental problems. Teachers jointly elaborated projects for formal, non-formal integrated curriculum activities tested, adapted and improved at school level. Students, supported by teachers, designed/implemented school/local community environmental projects to solve the identified environmental problems. All activities had as results: ecology and ICT training of 35 teachers who became training/information providers for a minimum of 95 teachers within the 8 schools, finding solutions for local environmental problems together with local environment partners, training of students/teachers in project management, student environmental projects, exchange of good practices, a Methodological Guide for Formal/Non-formal Ecological Education and Environmental Projects, a Teacher Training Curriculum on Environmental Issues, a collection of ICT instruments integrated in ecological education, institutional development in the environmental education policy of the eight partner schools. There was a definite positive impact on students, teachers, schools, communities: a responsible attitude towards the environment was shaped and developed as well as a student environmentally aware behavior, teachers developed work competencies and abilities in terms of environmental education, digital competencies and of communication in English language were formed and refined, an improvement of institutional capacity of approaching long-standing development education and a development of inter-institutional cooperation relationships, a completion of the school-community-parents triad by involving parents into activities, stimulation of student desire to carry on learning thus preventing risk of early school leaving. Training of teachers at European standards , elaborated work instruments/strategies, exchange of good practices, opening of teachers and schools towards national/inter-sectorial/international cooperation announcing long-term benefits for partner institutions. Application of new environmental educational strategies, elaborated through joint effort, induced positive attitudinal and behavioral effects in participants who were able to act to maintain and improve environment quality in order to prevent future environmental problems.

The project CHECKMATES - CHESSMATES! - Fostering student motivation through logic games is a 6 school partnership: Romania, Poland, Spain, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. THREATS for our institutions: more and more student-student and student-teacher conflicts because of Ss coming from different social background and because of bad communication at institutional level; a growing number of students who are NOT motivated to learn and have lower academic results and also a growing number of teachers who cannot face communication issues as an expectation of a modern and dynamic school system. We looked for partners who have the same goal as ours: enable EACH single learner to achieve his/her potential by understanding and embracing the diversity of their needs, regardless of socio-economic, cultural or other differences. We wish to try answering our need at institutional level by introducing the use of chess and other logic games in indoor/outdoor learning. We also want to encourage communication, intercultural activity among children and teachers in order to strengthen the European character of the project.The GOAL of our strategic partnership entitled: CHECKMATES - CHESSMATES! - Fostering student motivation through logic games is Ensuring quality education to the students who deal with social issues through an active participatory approach that uses logic games in classroom activities.O1: To strenghten the relationship among the 6 schools participating in the project through 3 short-term student echange and 3 joint-staff teacher activities by the end of the 2 year project and with the participation of 18 teachers/school; O2: To develop at least 3 methods, improve and test them using logic games inside and outside the classroom through organising 3 teachers' workshops during the 2 year project time with the participation of 12 teachers/school;O3: To raise with 25% both teachers and students usage of ICT tools in effective and efficient way for the work inside and outside the classroom by using computer-game learning activities (including chess) through 3 short-term exchanges of 6 pupils and 2 teachers/school by the end of the 2nd project year; O4.To reduce with 25% the number of student-student and teacher-student conflicts on institutional level by participating at 6 common transnational activities by the end of the 2nd year with the participation of 18 teachers and 18 students/school as each activity focuses on developing efficient communication during the interaction among the participants;O5:To develop intercultural competences among Ss and teachers so that at the end of the 2nd project year they get to know cultural similarities and differences of partner countries and communities, being able to accept each other just the way they are so that after closing the project they do not have behavior problems, they can easily integrate in different social and cultural groups. Results are as follows:INTANGIBLE: improvement of participants' skills regarding the use of chess/logic games in inside/outside teaching and learning; the exchange of best practices between the partner institutions regarding game-based strategies and methods; creative thinking, an increased motivation for learning; improvement of English language conduct; improvement of computer using skills by using ICT resources for designing project products or using different online platforms; improvement of peer cooperation, group-work competencies and different other social skills; increased knowledge on different cultures; positive international relations and future cooperations.TANGIBLE: 3 short-term exchange of pupils, 3 teachers' transnational workshops; a website and a brochure to present the project; Christmas CHESS cards; eTwinning platform; chess classes twice a week as an extracurricular activity throughout the project; an album of snapshots as the result of the Snapshot time! activity; a Book of Games; Erasmus + project Book. Direct target group:18 teachers and students dealing with social behaviour issues as follows: 40 Ss aged 10-14 from Romania, 30 Ss aged 12-14 from Poland, 30 Ss 9-11/12 from Spain, 30 Ss aged 9-12 from Lithuania and 30 students aged 9-12 from Hungary. A total of 160 students at partnership level. 6 students will participate at short-term students exchange activities, 2 of the four is a student with difficulties concerning socialising.By getting to know other countries and moving among different socio-cultural environments, the image of participant institutions will be improved in our communities. Plans on project sustainability is under prepare and sharing European knowledge and experience is going to be our permanent focus. This project gives an added value to each school involved as focuses on exchange of good practices increasing the knowledge of participants about chess and game/based teaching, improve professional skills and competences, all these by sharing experience with each other.