PEACE

The PEACE project has been built upon promoting common values such as patiance, encourgement, acceptance, tolerance, respect, equal opportunities, communication and empathy. We would like to foster socialization, intercultural interaction and a sense of belonging and by that we hope we can decrease early school leavings as well. Only if people know how to have peace of mind at early school years, they will contribute to bring peace to the world in adulthood. So the project focusses on 3 themes; 1-Inner peace /peace in mind (moral and common values as well as patience, encourgement, communication) 2-Peace at school (preventing violence, conflict resolution, anger managment emphasizing acceptance and empathy.) 3-World Peace (to express their feelings through sports and art and to be of added value to world peace.)Our target groups are; students aged 15-19, school staff, parents, local authorities, associations/foundations and organisations working in the field of peace and the citizens. Six schools with different students and staff profiles from 5 different countries, established this strategic partnership in order to exchange good practices because the only way to get peace is by collaboration. The methodology we intend to apply in the PEACE project is focusing on teamwork, peer to peer and intercultural learning including peace education. Besides, the PEACE Project will give the chance to the participants to experience different non formal education tools such as workshops, trainings, seminars, role-plays, team works, educational visits, roundtable discussions, presentations and web 2.0 tools. Our project is learner based due to it's problem-solving character.This project will take 2 years. During these two years, 5 transnational meetings and 5 learning, teaching, training activities have been arranged. The PEACE Project aims to contribute the students' personal development in order to provide their inner peace, to promote the students' behaviours on how to respect, tolerate the peoples' opinions, accept and appreciate their suggestions, set a friendly and safe school atmosphere in which students respect to each other, to develope feeling of empathy, to support the rising movement of global peace culture, to disregard the differences and reduce the prejudies, violence, discrimination, to reduce the nonattendance rate. For achieving these goals, we planned various actvities in mobilities. An interactive training for strenghtening the personality of the participants in order to keep inner peace will be held in Turkey. A workshop for defining and educating the participants about anger management, preventing violence and conflict resolution techniques and a film treaphy for expressing their feelings related to topic will be arranged in Netherlands. An educational trip to a school with disabled (Physical/menthal) students and role reversal activity among the mixed group of students in different departments of school will be organized for raising the feeling of empathy in France. An educational visit to the Nobel (Peace) Museum and Forum för levande historia (Forum for a living history) ; interview with migrant students and staff and their families working in the school; a seminar for giving the significance of religious /moral values for keeping the world peace will be held by religious organizations in Sweden. A performance workshop will be organized for educating peace through sports and be an added value to world peace in Italy. In our local activities we will focus on presentations, exhibitions, involving all target groups using communicative approches and organizing local annual awareness events using cooperative learning methods.Among the expected results of the project we hope to broaden the participants knowledge concerning peace, tolerance, racism, discrimination; increasing the motivation for building peace; promoting the students personal and professional development; setting a friendly and safe school atmosphere; reducing the nonattendance rate and early school leavings; motivating them to use innovative IT techniques and to learn foreign languages. The impacts that we envisage are: developing social, intercultural, communication, problem-solving skills; motivating to learn languages and improving IT competences; learning from other cultures; being more positive, creative and happy individuals in life long period.Regarding the number of participants, the project is open to everyone willing to participate. However every school will have 17 participants that will be involved in the mobilities from each country. Certainly more indirect beneficiaries will take place in the project through the activities and using audio-visual media tools. We hope that PEACE project will be a contribution to the rising movement of global peace culture.