"""Let the children change the world - teaching and learning tolerance and values from preschool on"" was a three year project, in which five preschools from Europe collaborated in order to improve the preschools' teaching methods and educational environments to promote human rights and combat discrimination. More about the partners in annex 4. We wanted to contribute to a decrease of discrimination in our societies, by directing our attention to small children, to how we teach and how they learn, to examine our attitudes and our educational environments; and by changing our preschools in a manner that would promote all individuals’ equal value regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, gender identity or gender expression and disability. Discrimination is a violation of law and human rights in all of our countries and is a criminal act. Still the violation takes place almost daily, regardless if it depends on the society members or structural problems. The number of assaults, based on all the grounds of discrimination is high in most European countries. Some hold no statistics on so called “hate crime”, while others present statistics on one or several motives.The purpose of the project was to create a developed method guide with information on how to best work on the grounds of discrimination in preschool. The method guide will help staff to create and change the educational environments in the preschools so it promotes every individual’s human rights regardless ethnic background, race, skin colour or nationality, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disabilities or age. The common actions in our preschools concerning combating discrimination address the issues of gender and ethnicity, but we wanted to extend the work and include religion and other beliefs, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation (LGBT) and age. The five participating preschools in this project were from Europe and were both private and public, had different number of children with ages 1-6. Each partner brought experiences in different areas, which they could share with each other. Neither of them though had experiences of working with combating discrimination on all grounds, especially not concerning LGBT but the Swedish partner to some extend, that is why we expected the project to have a huge impact on all the preschools. The needs to be address in this project were - to develop staff members’ knowledge and skills in the area- to develop teaching methods adapted to small children- to create learning environments that promote inclusion and respect for human rights- to develop methods for including families in the work- to achieve goals in the national curriculum’s aims for preschool education - to actively work with values - to treat parents, regardless of their background, in a respectful manner- to raise children’s awareness of diversity in our societiesOur project was mainly teacher oriented, although children of the participating preschools’ would be directly involved in the local project activities. Objectives- to create educational environments in the preschools (facilities, materials, teaching methods etc.) that promote every individual’s human rights, regardless ethnic background, race, skin color or nationality, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, disabilities or age- to increase children’s tolerance for diversity and respect for human rights - to increase teachers’ self-confidence concerning teaching children within the theme of the project- to increase teachers’ teaching skills concerning the theme of the project- to equip teachers with useful tools to address and manage the different sisuations of intolerance based on all the grounds of discrimination- to increase parents participation in activities connected to the project topicDuring the project we have had six transnational meetings, each parter organized one meeting, Sweden did two. Every meeting included; progress reports, workshops/education, best practice, evaluation, dissemination and planning for upcoming activities. We visited the different preschools to examin the environments and see the changes. On the final transnational meeting we presentated the project´s outcomes and did the final arrangements for final evaluation, report and administration for each partners responsebilities. Between every transnational meeting each country worked in their own preschool with criteria and developed best practices. Each country have had several local project meetings to plan and administrate. During the project we had regular contact on our Facebook group. We carried out all the expected results. We have had different teacher training events and workshops. We used Facebook as a platform for communication and one international website for the project. Each country made their own blog. In this project we have had three questionnaire for measuring attitudes among staff parents."

Context/background:In accordance with the scientific researches on the field (started by the pioneering work of J.Bruner), we consider the narrative approach in early education very important for promoting life skills, a resilience attitude and significant exploration of all the knowledge areas and every kind of social relations. The narrative approach starts from the assumption that each knowledge and skill can be easily learned if it is treated inside stories, both in written, oral or figurative ways. Despite this importance, the narrative approach in early education usually is limited to specific activities, supported by few and not very innovative methodologies, inside school-settings which are not arranged (from both a structural and organizational point of view), taking into account the regular adoption of the narrative approach in education every day. Further, although preschools could take great advantage from a continuous partnership with the local (public) libraries in this field, this almost never happens, since the collaboration between preschool and libraries at most is limited to single episodic experiences and/or the loan of books. The narrative approach is so important for improving the quality of early education that it is worth emphasizing the narrative approach till the adoption of a real narrative curriculum. Specific tools for planning and evaluation and the close involvement of new stakeholders (libraries) must support the adoption of the narrative approach.Objectives:General Objective: To foster quality in preschool education through increased attention to the narrative approach.This general objective is articulated in the following specific objectives:SO1. Developing the narrative approach in preschools, adopting the appropriate tools to arrange the context, planning activities and evaluating the outcomes.SO2. Improving the collaboration between preschools and libraries for enhancing the narrative curriculum and for giving value and visibility to the spontaneous narrative production of the children (already present from an early age);SO3. Increasing preschool teachers’ professional skills on the narrative approach/curriculum.The partnership is composed by:A.Four preschools:1.Bergsvikens förskoleområde, Piteå Municipality – Sweden2.Early Childhood Educational Services, Imola Municipality – Italy (coordinator)3.Elmer schools in Schaarbeek (Brussels, Belgium)4.Meelespea Kindergarten in Tallinn – EstoniaB. The following specialized partners:1.University of Bologna – Italy – Department of Psychology2.SERN – Sweden Emilia Romagna Network – Public AgencyIn addition, the project is supported by three public Libraries as co-partners: the ones from Stuttgart, Piteå and Imola MunicipalitiesIt is foreseen that the following practitioners will be involved in the project as a whole:- 250 preschool teachers (40 involved in transnational activities).-7 preschool pedagogues (also involved in transnational activities)-10 academic experts (3 involved in transnational activities)-700 children attending preschools and their parents-10 librariansActivities and Methodology1.Gathering best practices on the project topics2.Realizing a comprehensive narrative approach in early education inside the involved preschools, editing a specific handbook as well.3.Carrying out specific activities for monitoring and evaluating the application of the narrative approach in early education;4.Realizing stable agreements between preschools and local libraries5.Providing two specific learning activities to the participants related to the objectives of the project.On the base of these activities, to realize the following intellectual outputs:IO1: a handbook on the implementation of the narrative curriculum in preschools: guidelines on arranging the learning settings and the educational plan.IO2: a set of tools for monitoring evaluation both the appropriateness of the school setting and the children's learning well-being in the preschools adopting the narrative approach.IO3: at least 8 original childhood literature products starting from the children's spontaneous narrative creativity.Results:1. At the end of the project the following results are expected:2. The adoption of the tested narrative curriculum by the involved preschools;3. The elaboration of some agreement framework between preschools and libraries4. The elaboration of tools for evaluating the real effectiveness of the adoption of the narrative approach in early education;5. Spreading the interest on the narrative curriculum in other schools managers in the territory of the partner.Beyond the project:1.The intellectual outputs will be on a free disposal of all the preschools in the Europe also after the end of the project;2.UNIBO will be able to carry out the academic research on the topics of the project, even beyond its end;3.The involved preschools will keep in touch to further develop the project's topic.

"With this project our aim is to encourage children through values-based education to start noticing dangers around us, how to prevent them, how to act out in a case of an emergency and how be more caring towards each other. In addition we would like to arise teachers and adults awareness about how to have necessary skills, tools, knowledge about preventing dangers and giving first-aid and how to pass all that to our children. The three main objectives of our project are:• Children: children learn and experience through value-based education to notice everyday life dangers around them; how to prevent dangerous situations and how to help an injured person if needed.• Teachers: teachers learn and share primary knowledge, use and create practical skills and tools to teach children to notice dangers from their everyday life, how to prevent them, how to call for help and how to give first aid if needed.• Produce: free ware first aid kit (electronic material) in 5 different languages.Regarding to this project we have a coordinating project team of 7 people from Estonia who will be in charge of running this project and partner countries such as Norway, The Republic of North Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria. Each partner will delegate 4 employees to each transnational project meeting. All our partners have participated at least in one Strategic Partnership and one of our partners, Romania, has an experience of being a project coordinator. We feel that our partners are a good fit for this project, because they bring diverse strengths, new insights and specific competences, as described separately in the partner organization sections.This phase of filling in the project application form has shown, that all the partners are highly motivated and ready to work towards common goal. We all stand by equality, diversity and involvement - our common interest is to prepare our teachers in that sense to be innovative, brave, motivated, highly skilled and collaborative.During the project implementation phase we will have 6 transnational meetings and workshops where we will brainstorm and work out new materials (worksheets/games), come up with the situation descriptions and agree on terms of making educational videos according to the criteria we are currently implementing. During our last meeting in Tallinn, the host organization will hold a big local childrens´ event called ""Hea inimene Gala/Good person Gala"". We hope to make a great impression to our project partners and they will carry out the event in their own countries and that valuable tradition would spread all around the Europe!In between these transnational meetings we will have local project meetings to make local time-plan for implementing the work and eTwinning video meetings to make arrangements for upcoming training.This project will teach participants how to use methodology and materials, that we will work out all together. We will work towards developing high quality early childhood education and care systems and our goal is to make first aid as a part of each participants kindergartens´ curriculum. Project partners will learn how to use project knowledge and materials in their everyday learning and teaching process. We consider it to be an asset for an organisation to develop and maintain sustainable learning process what this project will certainly endorse.We also believe there is a great need to work out practical materials which our teachers and children can use in their everyday life learning/teaching process. Also it is a good material to use as a training material for staff. First aid kit will be used in organisations everyday learning and teaching process. It will be free ware to share with other kindergartens in participant countries because it will be both in english and their local languages.There will also be local project blogs in each partners´ language that will have review and latest updates about our project work for all the target groups that are interested. At the same time we will have international webpage/blog running where we will post our activities in cooperation with our partners in English. Partners will write articles in schools magazines; do a Erasmus + space presentation panel to their kindergarten; and use similar ways to make our project work as visible and approachable for public as possible. The outcomes of the project, open license first aid kit, will be directly transferable to other educational institutions on primary level; youth centers; Centers for Extra-Curricular Activities schools, even on other public and private institutions that deliver services to the public. Our intentions is intensive dissemination and wide using of our final product to maintain our projects´ sustainability."