Context/backgroundThe village of Bjørkelangen, with a population of less than 4000, and Forst (Lausitz), with a population of 18,000, both lie in rural areas. Bjørkelangen lies approximately one hour from Oslo and Forst lies approximately two hours from Berlin and Dresden. Our two colleges, Bjørkelangen videregående and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn-Gymnasium, have been involved in a very successful exchange partnership for over twenty-five years, so there is an excellent, well established flow of communication between contact people, teachers and students. One of the main aims of the exchange partnership was to make students aware of the cultural differences between Norway and Germany. This awareness also helped the students see their own everyday behaviour and way of thinking from another perspective. We believe that this Erasmus+ project will add an exciting, important new dimension to the old partnership by nuancing the question of cultural differences through its examination of cultural values within each country, rather than simply between them. We have chosen to focus on attitudes towards rural areas and large cities because of the location of our colleges and their catchment areas. Main objectivesThere is no denying that the main objective of the project is to develop the linguistic and cultural competence of the 60 students who will be directly involved in the project. Travelling to another country, experiencing its everyday life first hand, and speaking a foreign language in authentic situations has proven to be an excellent way to develop those competences, not only for the over 1000 students who have travelled between our two colleges during our successful partnership, but for millions of students like them all over the world. By staying with host families, we aim to utilise that possibility to the full.However, this is not simply a traditional class trip. We want the students to work together to learn about many different aspects of living in the Norwegian and German countryside, and we want them to compare their findings. In addition, we want them to gather information during their visits to three large cities, Berlin, Dresden and Oslo, and reflect on the similarities and differences between these cities and the rural areas around Bjørkelangen and Forst. We hope this learning experience will provide a more nuanced understanding of cultural differences than a simple comparison of everyday life in Norway and Germany, and will raise their lever of intercultural competence, thus empowering them and making them more employable in an increasingly interconnected world.Participants60 students and 4 teachers will travel during the project, but many other people will be involved either directly or indirectly, especially at the days spent at each college. Two coordinators and some non-travelling teachers will also be involved in the planning phase. During the dissemination process many students, teachers and other members of staff will learn about the findings and other aspects of the project.ActivitiesThe students will give presentations to each other about the history and culture of the cities they visit and each lunch together. They will interview people on the street about city life. In the countryside they will cycle, canoe, make campfires and eat traditional food. While at the colleges they will compare and contrast local news stories, reflect on and discuss the contrast between the city and the countryside they have experienced, and will create artwork that depicts their experiences.We want the students to select from a list of research activities connected to the countryside and the city. In the second year of the project we are expecting to add and perhaps remove some of the activities based on the feedback we receive at the end of the first year.MethodologyThere will be a mixture of planned, formal activities and more spontaneous, informal activities. The tasks will be goal-oriented and directly related to the objectives of the Erasmus+ project. All four language skills will be covered and there will be a creative task at the end. The students will be given responsibilty to organise some of the act ResultsWe are expecting the students to learn that there are more similarities than differences between Norway and Germany because of the rural/urban focus, rather than a Norway/Germany focus. We are hoping that by nuancing the cultural analysis they will gain a greater understanding of the cultural differences that exist within a country, and the shared urban and rural experiences across national borders.Longer-term benefitsWe expect the students who are directly involved in the project to gain long-term benefits through improved foreign language skills and increased intercultural competence, making them more employable. By involving local newspapers in the project, we hope they will be interested in the results and will write articles about them.

Large scale European regions need an integrated civil society, that doesn´t only see the European Union as an abstract idea but as a livingspace, where they can really act in a common and transnational cooperative way. For the future it will be therefore necessary to foster transnational forms of participation, which makes it possible for young people from different neighbours Member States to create a common transregional dialog, social commitment and political participation. Although there are several initiatives a management of knowledge and empiric founded quality standards, that identifies and links in a constructive way existing transborder participation experiences and “Best-Practice-Models” are still missing. That is why the training and encounter centre Schloß Trebnitz e.V. has established within the strategical partnership a “European Centre for transnational Youth-participation”. This project aimed within a two years periode at fostering and exploring transnational youth participation in the Polish-German border region. In this period of time the structural and theoretical fundaments for a sustainable implantation of this “European Centre for transnatioal youth participation” have been layed. We saw participation not only in the concrete field of politics but in a wider space which involved also all themes effecting the lives of young people. On the one hand it was the task to strengthen the development and the expansion of civil society committment and transnational participation in the borderregion by offering an educational and advisory service for multipliers, pedagogical staff, political and administrative decisionmakers and committed young people. On the other hand the centre served as coordination and research institution to foster the exchange of skills and knowledge and to enhance the development of qualitiy criterias for binational participation initiatives of young people by the help of praxis and evaluation research and by building an archive for participation and cooperation projects. The annual conferences for transnational youth participation served to present and discuss the results of the project with an interested specialist community in form of the book publications and the archive for youth participation.Naturally we have produce a website which presents all the relevant results and news concerning the project. Furthermore was a blended mobility activities with young peoples from two Polish and German schools. This activity was designed be a model project for the concrete testing of the project results and of establishing formal structures for local and transnational youth participation. In order to guarantee a functional project management we have established a project office in Trebnitz Castle where all activities were coordinated and substantially organized. he partners in the project from different schools, universities, administration and foundations have plan their own activities and have coordinate their common activities. There have been the following responsabilities: Universities - scientific supervision (quality standards), Schools - blended mobility activities - certification strategie for German-Polish Schoolactivities ; foundations and educational centers: exchange of knowledge and practical application of project results; administrations - implementation of the results in the region in other areas, structural implementation of youth participation structures. The qualitiy and the relevance of projects have signifivcantly raised through scientific monitoring, the development of qualitiy criterias, through innovative methods and the exchange of best practice. We already can recognize the following results: - A qualitative and quantitative augmentation of transnational youth participation projects in the region - A diversification of project partners by including new target groups (schools, administration, universities)- Intensification of experience sharing and crosslinking of the project partners and other stakeholders in the region (Euregio Viadrina)- the development of the region Märkisch Oderland and the Poviat Gorzow to an exemplary model area for transnational youth participation, where all relevant stakeholders, decision makers, civil society and institutions are integrated.The Project results have been presented on serveral seminars and Workshops all over Germany and Poland and they have led to divers further activities and projects, especially within the new structure of Schloss Trebnitz as official partnership-coordinator of the Land Brandenburg with the Woiwodship Greater Poland. since June 2016.