"""Our stories are our bridges"""

<< Background >>With this project we wanted to educate students from our 3 counties to promote tolerance towards other nationalities and to teach them how to protect and promote Europe’s cultural heritage, through storytelling about it. The stories are an excellent tool for transmitting the culture, tradition and customs of a nation, and telling stories that highlight the importance of building high values, such as empathy and respect for others. We provided opportunities to students to share stories from their own country and hear the stories of other countries. Through storytelling about own culture in this project, the students learned about own history and the specifics of their culture. Also, exposure to different cultural stories helped them to develop an empathy and appreciation for different perspectives and experiences. We improved cultural awareness among our students and saw that storytelling is a powerful tool for helping them to develop critical thinking skills. We promoted storytelling as cultural heritage and a resource for the future, because we stressed the role of young people in keeping and sharing stories as heritage, tradition and keeping culture alive, according to promoting tolerance, acceptation and multicultural living.<< Objectives >>Through telling stories children can learn about own history and the specifics of their culture. The period of childhood is important period of creating self-image, identity, as well as the basis for values and beliefs. Telling stories that highlight the importance of culture, tradition and customs are building high values. It's important for students to listen and share the stories from their own country, as well as the stories of other countries. The objectives we wanted to achieve by implementing the project were:- To increase students' awareness and understanding of different cultures and nationalities.- To reinforce a sense of belonging to Europe and to raise awareness of European common history and values.- To promote empathy and understanding towards individuals from diverse backgrounds.- To reduce prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes towards other nationalities.- To encourage critical thinking of cultural differences and similarities.- To promote positive attitudes towards diversity and multiculturalism.- To encourage the sharing and appreciation of Europe’s cultural heritage as a shared resource.- To underline the importance of caring for and transmitting our shared heritage by storytelling about it.<< Implementation >>Project implementation was very important in order to correlate with the planning process and the project outcomes. As a project coordinator, we established a plan to follow, and all the partners followed that plan effectively and on time. We focused on implementing variety of activities with aim to foster better collaboration, cross-cultural learning and promote skills development among participants. These activities were created to align with the project's objectives, which included strengthening international partnerships, developing key competencies, and promoting active citizenship. Below is an overview of the main activities we implemented in our project:1. e-Meeting: Project Management issues2. Slovenia LLT for Learners Mobility3. e-Meeting: Evaluation of Slovenia and planning for Croatia Mobility4. Croatia LLT for Learners Mobility5. e-Meeting: Evaluation of Croatia and planning for North Macedonian Mobility6. North Macedonian LLT for Learners Mobility7. e-Meeting: Overall Evaluation of the whole projectThe dissemination was distributed evenly according to the activities.<< Results >>Concrete outputs and results that we wanted to realize with this project were:- Increased knowledge and awareness of other cultures and nationalities among students and European common history and values.- Greater empathy and respect towards individuals from different backgrounds.- Decreased prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes towards other nationalities.- Improved communication, collaboration and increased appreciation for diversity and multiculturalism among students from different cultural backgrounds.- Improved academic performance and social skills for caring and sharing Europe cultural heritage.The implementation of our project to revive old stories had a positive impact on the students and teachers as well as society as a whole, leading to greater understanding, empathy and inclusivity. Promoting tolerance towards other nationalities leaded to greater social harmony and understanding. When individuals from different cultures coexisted respectfully, they collaborated and learned from each other, which lead to a more inclusive community.We learned about true values of old stories and overall are very satisfied with the results of our project.