In June 2013 Galiani Institute participated to an intercultural competition in our region "Gli altri siamo noi" with photos about HR made during our Comenius Project.
We won the first prize!
Comenius students were asked to produce a social project to improve our surroundings and our local community as part of their work in the common project. As a result, two projects were chosen and implemented.
This is the 5th eTwinning quality label for Ms Vivian Toffi Choratidou and the Upper Secondary School in Agia Fylaxi, Limassol, Cyprus, which is awarded to our project "Human Rights in Europe":
Just now (23/10/2013) our project won the 4th eTwinning Quality label through our colleague Mr Max Quattrini from ITIS "Luigi Trafelli" in Nettuno/Italy.
Congratulations to all in Nettuno Team, teachers and students.
It's nice!!! Τhe quality of our project is already recognised 3 times...
After the German and the Spanish school now the Greek one and Ms Katerina Fyssaki have been awarded for our project "Human Rights in Europe" with the Etwinning Quality Label by the Greek Support Service.
This award is encouraging and motivating our teachers and pupils. Congratulations to all schools.
The second award was for the Spanish school and the teacher Carmen Flores.
The first award came for the German school and the teacher of English language Ms Anna Curto Naffissi, one of the co-ordinators of the Comenius project.
The main objective of this project was to make students aware of being part of a historically grown community that shares a common system of values based on freedom and equality. As these rights have unfortunately often been violated, there is the necessity for all the members of this community to respect and defend them if they want to become constructively critical European citizens. Our students have dealt with this topic by the means of Poetry, Arts and Music. The project was created by 9 schools from Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain. The teachers, Anna Curto and Holger Schmidt from Karben/Germany, had the responsibility of the coordination of the whole project.
Early in the first year a blog was created by the Greek team and it proved to be an important tool for the dissemination of our common work. As part of the project the team from the Italian partner of Nettuno composed a kind of "Human Rights hymn" and more verses were added to it by the students from the other partner countries. In addition to the common hymn the song "Don't give up" on human rights was created by the German partner. Both songs were sung by an international student choir in a concert during our end-of- year meeting in Chieti/Italy in May 2012.
Additionally, during the first year the partners worked for the production of logos, Power Point presentations on the evolution of Human Right in partner’s countries, poems and drama scenes, all based on the topic "Human Rights" and presented during the meetings.
During the second year of the partnership all members involved worked on a) photographs for a competition in Poland, b) drama scenes for the meeting in France and c) the final musical “A Flower to the Enemy” which was composed by the Nettuno team, translated in English by the Greek team and was presented in Germany. All the activities carried out during the 2 years of the project implied a lot of coordination work from all partner schools, intensive rehearsals during the meetings but were at the same time an excellent opportunity for the creation of strong bonds of friendship between all the people involved. Moreover, the students had the chance to participate in various workshops, discussions and excursions based on various aspects of Human Rights violations: racial discrimination, homophobia and sexism to mention a few. Thanks to the participation in the project all teachers and pupils alike had the chance to reflect on the subject of Human Rights, to express themselves through various forms of art but also to learn to use new forms of technology. Most of the products of the project have been uploaded on our blog at http://humanrights-in-europe.blogspot.com. The progress of the project was constantly evaluated through questionnaires for students and teachers separately, created by the Spanish team and all the relevant reports may be seen on the blog as well.
The European project partners see Europe as a historically grown community that shares a common system of values, regarding freedom and equality for all human beings as its essential principles. We want to make our students aware of these cultural similarities but also of the fact that these high values are often violated so that there is a necessity for every single member of this community to take responsibility and to protect them in our daily lives.
This means that these rights also come along with certain duties and requirements like integration efforts, respect and tolerance instead of exclusion or intolerance.
We are convinced that especially the current threat of international terrorism which spreads not only fear but also xenophobia and generalizing prejudice must not put the liberal basis of Europe at risk.
So the project's aim is not only to make the educative community aware of the importance of human rights by using music, language and arts, but also to respect and defend those rights so as to become constructively critical European citizens.
Our purpose is furthermore to use creative means together with ICT skills to improve the target language and to develop solidarity and cooperation between students from the EU. The topic chosen will be Freedom, Equality and Human Rights so as to raise the students' awareness of these issues and develop their ability to deal with integration within the EU.
Not only language helps bridging the gap to understanding and cooperation but also music and art as non-verbal means of communication play an important part in our project. Applied in lyrics, poems, songs, videos or drawings the aesthetic dimension will help to see beyond the pure communicational purpose.
ITCG Galiani Main Hall: a representative of Amnesty International on 10th December 2011 in occasion of 63rd anniversary of the declaration of Human Rights.
Hello! I’m Amparo Garcia, head of studies in
this school, as well as the (Spanish) Comenius coordinator together with my
beloved Carmen Flores.
Before saying some thank-you words to
everybody, I would like to sum up how this lovely relationship between the
Comenius project and this high-school took place. It all started in the spring
of 2010, when the leader team of our school thought and decided to open its
doors to new national and international projects, finding in the Comenius
projects one of the best options for our students to travel abroad, improve
their languages, became more mature, cooperate with foreign countries and
became in the end discerning and tolerant students.
In September 2010 we begun to look for possible
matches and we found a German led project about the Human Rights through music,
poetry and art, which we decided to join up. Carmen Flores and I attended the
preparatory visit in Karben in November 2010, and we prepared the 67-sheet
document needed to hand over in Madrid.
On the first days of July 2011 we received two
great announcements: Madrid had approved the project and we had the maximum
number available for student’s mobilities (20).
The participant countries where about to be German,
The Czech Republic, Poland, France, two schools from Italy, Greece, Cyprus,
Spain and, unfortunately, a Romanian school whose country did not concede the
required approval for participation, and failed to join the project.
The experience during these two years has been
really incredible and thus, I want to give some thank-you words. First of all,
thanks to the students who took an attempt in the different competitions to win
mobilities as well to the students who were selected to join the project.
Thanks for being so incredible, we are really proud of you because you proved we
can take you everywhere, making us feel really good among you in every meeting,
and for the great role you played all the time. Thanks also to all the
participant Comenius teachers we’ve met in every meeting, because we’ve found
really good friends in you, thanks to our school partners who covered our
lessons while we attended the meetings, and also to the crazy teachers who
didn’t hesitate to take part in this project in a very dynamic way. In the
third place, I would like to give thanks to the families, because you entrusted
us leaving your children in our hands, for the help you offered when we needed
you, and also for being there all the time helping us to construct a better
education for your children.
I want to give special thanks to Carmen Flores,
the alma mater in this project.
Without her, you can believe me when I say this project would have been really hard,
so… THANK YOU Carmen!
And that’s all I wanted to say to you, I hope you
have enjoyed the experience through your schoolmates and children. We have
asked for a new Comenius project for the next two years, if we are lucky. Have
a nice summer, take some rest, enjoy all the time and refill your batteries
because we will meet next September. Kisses!
Carmen Flores - Spanish team coordinator
Susanna Farré - Vallbona d'Anoia's High School Headmistress
Translation from Catalan into English
Hello! I’m
Susanna Farré, the high school principal here in Vallbona. I was invited to
participate in this video edition and it’s my turn to represent all the
appreciation for this work done by all the members.
First of
all I would like to congratulate the students who decided to take part in this
project. Maybe they were unconscious of the whole project at first, but they
achieved to widen their knowledge and they also made us realise of how valuable
our work is as teachers.
On the
other hand I want to recognise and appreciate the entirely implication of the
whole team of teachers along this two Comenius years. Special thanks to the
coordinators but also to all the teachers who have dedicated a large amount of
hours working in and out the school, and to the teachers who went with our
students abroad to attend the meetings.
Travelling
abroad visiting the Comenius partners’ countries has allowed us to collect
little pieces of each culture, traditions and different ways to act. We’ve
learned about their educative systems and we’ve realised we are also doing
quite well, but we’ve also seen how to improve in other issues, because this project
has given us an European scope difficult to obtain if not under the Comenius
conceiving.
Finally I
just want to express gratitude to all the people, like students and families
who contributed to this project and made it possible. Maybe it’s true that
there’s a sixth sense because this gratitude can be noticed in the atmosphere among
us. That’s all from me, so THANK YOU and I encourage to everyone.
Teachers' reflections (Joan Pere Roselló and Pilar Rodríguez)
On 21st
June 2013 we celebrated the traditional yearly dinner at school to close the
school year with families, students, teachers and staff. It was held outside at
the school’s football playground on a full moon night and it was called “The
Eve of Human Rights” because music, poems and dances which students represented
on stage were all vindicating our human rights, especially the rights to
freedom of thought, education and home.
The
Comenius team also presented our closure video on Comenius, which we will
upload very soon, where our principal, students, parents, and teachers involved
in this Comenius project talk about their experiences and the project’s impact
on school and on their lives.
Since it
was the anniversary of the birth of Salvador Espriu (1913-1985), one of our
best Catalan poets, some of his poems denouncing the lack of freedom of thought
and speech and the violation of human rights during the Franco’s dictatorship
in Spain were read and interpreted by our students while other students played
or danced to the music. On these links below you can learn more about our
universal poet.
We also
said goodbye to some of our most compromised students in this Comenius project
finishing their studies at our high school. You’ll remember the twins Elena and
Mariona, and also Aleth and Sara. Apart from being great individuals, they have
participated in several Comenius mobilities and most interestingly, they have
drawn three mini-projects of action in the framework of Comenius to improve the
lives of our educative community and bring human rights to life in SES
Vallbona.
Below you
can see some pictures on the “Eve of Human Rights” at SES Vallbona d’Anoia.