School is fit through Europe Center “SIFEC”

The idea of our project came from the necessity of offering our students curricular activities complemented by extracurricular activities, with a special emphasis on developing their various skills, on also giving chances to 'underprivileged' students and diminishing exclusion, drop-out rates and school fastigue and on giving them the chance to discover and unfold their diverse intercultural skills. Students of each school set up clubs (ISC = International Student Club) at their school. These were included in a “Europe Center” at school, which coordinates resources, meetings and topics. This center started to reach other European schools, creating a European network and international clubs, working on the same project / topic. These concentrated on topics relevant for Europe and the future. The following clubs were created dependend on the interests of students and teachers in each school: 1.Media /Journalism Club 2.International Job Market Club 3.Company start-up Club 4.Debating Club 5.Travel Club 6.Eco Club Considering the variety of issues that were addressed in the clubs and the flexibility of our project, we achieved that many students and teachers found the topics attractive and joinend the clubs. Moreover, each center was able to develop in time, as a result of dissemination activities, the possible impact on the centers by the products of the project and the creation of new ideas, both during the project period and beyond.The clubs encouraged students to gain knowledge and to understand , compare and evaluate different attitudes and habits of the countries, to grow awareness and to develop social, economic, professional and linguistic skills and entrepreneurial thinking and acting. They worked together via different communication tools like the project homepage, in the internet forum of the project, video conferences, eTwinning etc. The results of the club projects were finished at international partnership meetings. Learning/teaching/training activities, were presented, evaluated (analysis SWOT with questionnaires) and published ( e.c. www.sifec.eu). The activities created a broadening of options in job orientation, more flexibility on the job market and the students' private life. Our project has the chance to be permanently disseminated because, after the end of the project, the Europe Centers remains an important component of each school and is able to develop other types of European cooperation. The results of the individual clubs were documented as project results and were published as an inspiration for similar projects for other schools. The project also emphasized how schools could install certain clubs in the lessons of various subjects. The structure of international cooperation that was built up and tried out in the project was documented extensively and was offered to the schools in Europe as a readily usable structure.