Only the sky is the limit for open hearts! -SOLIDARITY FOR EQUALITY

"""One child, one book, one teacher, One pen can change the world"" Malala Yousafzai (Speech before the United Nations, July 12, 2013)The school should not be focused just on knowledge, but on relationships.The school must be a creative place for new relationships. School is the only place where children can learn what coexistence is.Many situations of inequality, poverty, and injustice are signs of not only the deep lack of fraternity but also the absence of a culture of solidarity.Regardless of how much is being discussed or of how many activities are undertaken in schools, it is a fact that the inclusion of students who are the margins of the educational process for various reasons is still the main challenge and problem in all partner schools and in the schools from the European countries.The project is designed to explore the diversity by working on the inclusion of students with disabilities or other vulnerable social groups. Solidarity involves the development of empathy, tolerance, communication, and social skills. According to different conduct researches, in the past decades, the students in our schools have been increasingly drifting away from these values. This contributes to reducing the intellectual and social development of students, which is a great loss to European values. With this project, we want to encourage every student to express himself, and give everyone equal chances. This project is also a good occasion to understand different identities, to be tolerant and to recognize that a wide range of cultures can cohabit. Discovering diversity will enrich everyone’s education and will play an essential part in understanding and accepting each other. The activities aimed by the project will enable students to socialize, learn more about each other, develop empathy, tolerance, communication, social and cultural skills. The planned activities are related to school curriculum (music, art, literature, sport, ICT etc.) The students will have a major role in the implementation of the activities and will enable them to develop their own personal skills and abilities. They will raise their self-esteem and will develop emotional intelligence, empathy, and solidarity.One of the main aims is to raise awareness of our own cultural identity, to bring together the common European cultural values as a basis for our coexistence, to feel culture as an enrichment of one's own life and to improve the existing inter cultural teaching.The 6 participating schools from Romania, Spain, Poland, Croatia and The Republic of NorthMacedonia, want to involve approximately 1000 participant students (150 direct participants) aged 10-15.They will participate in the project approximately 100 teachers (50 direct participants), 10 reprezentants administrative staff, 250 parents, representatives of NGOs and social-cultural organizations, other members of the local community, students and teachers from neighbouring schools. The objectives of the project are:1.Increasing emotional maturity, emotional literacy, and empathy of our students.2. Developing and emphasizing lifelong values in our students, the value of solidarity (greater sensitivity to the problems of inequality among people and to social marginalization, their commitment to social and educational inclusion).3. Encouraging self-esteem in young people - love and respect for oneself is the source of any other kind of love and respect for the other.4. Creating a positive school climate where students will take care of each other.METHODOLOGY:a) Project meetings: demonstrative lectures, presentations, workshops, lectures, round tables, monitoring and evaluation of activities, filling in questionnaires; on-line meetings, b) Student exchanges: learning from experiences, classes, workshops, work in groups or pairs, presentations, lectures, discussions on the topic of meetings, round tables, visits, various art activities, studies, monitoring and evaluation of activities, filling in questionnaires, gamification as an educational method;BASIC PRODUCTS : - e-book, with life stories (attached to a website with free access to the public)- project web site - project materials - photos, videos, a detailed description of good practices - as product we will establish Volunteer Clubs at each partner school- brochure and leaflets-manual for emotional literacy as an additional tool to the program for psycho-social intervention andbetter social inclusion of students.LONG -TERM BENEFITS OF PROJECT: - enable students to explore issues of diversity in our society, prejudices, stereotypes about gender, age disability, religion and culture, and promote a sense of tolerance in school and in society- make them aware of local and global issues and highlight global responsibility-examples of activities for acquiring emotional competences among the students who promote the socio-emotional climate in the classroom and in school, thus promoting and achieving learning."