Supporting schools for a better Europe. Fighting Xenophobia with education.

The ideas for the project arose as a result of reduced tolerance and increasing xenophobia in large parts of Europe. The main objective was therefore to make both adults working with education and youth increase their understanding of other people and cultures. Through understanding and experience, both tolerance and the opportunity to become aware of their own prejudices increases. In order to achieve this goal, another goal was to find and develop mutual educational methods and strategies in education to prevent xenophobia and intolerance. In this project it was 8 participation schools involved and the schools represent the following countries: Sweden, Portugal, Cypern, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Spain. All schools struggled with problems with Xenopobhia, but in different ways, and the schools and countries have different histories and backgrounds ackording to the main topic. Before every visit to the participating schools we had different activities with different topics, which everyone connected to the main project topic. It was both teacher activities and student activities, for example about minority groups in each country and famous people which has stood up against intolerance in different ways.Both staff, teachers and students who participated in the project, both through travel and through participation in activities linked to the project, have had a cultural exchange. Through this, their knowledge and understanding of the outside world has increased. the fear of the unknown, Xenophobia has thus decreased.During the project period, the project has been developed to include how to work with young people who are outside or at risk of getting out of society. Participants in the project have received training on how to work with new arrivals, students with downs syndrome, heterogeneity groups, youth who have been in youth care (/ youth prison, etc.). How important aftercare is in the last context.There have been new contacts, many certainly lifelong.Language skills have been developed especially in English, Greek, German and Spanish.The long-term benefits is that we gained new experiences and a method bank, for example there some of the activities during this project are very qualitative and can easily be used in education. We also think that activities and courses we taking part of can be used as training to teaching staff at schools and youth centers.