The primary purpose of education is not only to develop knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes and to embed fundamental values, but also to help young people to become active, responsible, open-minded members of society [...] to impart common fundamental values and to prevent and combat racism and intolerance” (Decl.of Paris,03/15)Five densely motivated high schools from Europe gathered to help to raise respectful,tolerant, open minded, peaceful, thoughtful,elagant, responsible,helpful,and sensitive students. After the Syrian war, millions of people left their homeland and began a journey. During this hourney, they have had many difficulties.Unfortunately some of them couldn't complete this journey. Now, some refugees have homes with low standart for living, some live in the camps, some in commune centres. They try to survive. However, most of them are really having great troubles, even the settled ones. Because they don't have a job or earn much money. Most of them aim to immigrate to Europe. Europe has had many immigrants before the Syrians as well. But with the Syrians, xenephobia , Islamaphobia, hatred speeches increased in Europe. Even in Turkey, although refugees are generally Muslims, the attitude of people towards them is not pleasing mostly. Refugee crisis seems to cause a change in the attribute to immigrants in European countries. A questionnaire led us to this project. The questionnaire showed that our students, who were 14-18 years old, had an egocentric attitude towards other people around them and in the world. The owners of future growing up with prejudices against others(foreigners,refugees,immigrants),may bring new radicilization problems with. With the project we ran, we aimed and succeded to; increase the awareness to the problems, and life conditions of refugees react against Islamophobia and Xenephobia break prejudices among students from partner countries let our students an international workshop chance improve our students' communication, language, and intercultural skills help our students grow as people with social responsibilities realize the cultural richness of their own country and Europe practice to respect and accept people improve our students' attitude towards other people Our project involved two kind of activties; project tasks, and Learning/Teaching/Training activities(LTT). Local activities tried to include more students to the project. Our activities like Traditional Sports Day, Traditional cuisine days helped to show the cultural richness of countries, and they helped to institution soul of the schools. Students were promoted to work actively for the project in all steps. Contrubiton of our students and teachers for dissemination was very important for us. They were free to propose new activities, and they proposed activities for disabled day,women day. For LTT s , each school was supposed to be represented at least by 5 students and 2 accompanying teachers. However, the number of participants is more than we aimed. All the students were invited to LTT s , and they were chosen according to the criteria we had specified. The methodology of our project involved : Choosing students objectively as they actively participated in the project Organizing some local activities at schools to promote a more friendly school atmosphere Dissemination (online,printed meterials,school boards etc) to create an awareness about the topics of the project, and to increase the affect of the project Studying and searching for the LTT topics and sharing these on schools Taking part in LTTs, seeing the differences,exchanging good practices Sharing good practices gained within the school Assesing the project's achievement Each LTT had general topics and a special topic to be discussed. Countries' Practices for refugees, Integration of immigrants to education etc are some of general topics. Special topics; Spain : Legal Rights of refugees Italy : Islamophobia Slovakia : Wars-Immigration Romania : Women and Children in the refugee crisis Turkey : Illegal Practices Refugees are exposed to Meeting our students in LTT s , letting them learn from each other, and participating students from host partner to some activities like exhibitions contributed positively to their opinions about foreigners. Creating an awareness to hard life conditions of refugees, and increasing emphaty and symphaty for them was a major concren for us. With LTT s, wehope that our students really saw that to be tolerant, socially responsible,courteus,compassionate,earnest and humble was not related to the nationality. Anyone of any nations could have these virtues and vice versa. Taking part in this project gace our schools a chance to improve their capacities to work internationally. The other teachers may like to begin new projects. As the students became aware of the oppurtunites of EU, they will be directed to search for Erasmus oppurtunities in their higher educations.
