"""Volunteerism and Active Citizenship: From Individuals to Organizations"" is a project about life, about being helpful and productive in communities, in countries and Europe as a carrier of a core of ideas, values and good practices. The schools in the European Union have to transfer those ideas and values and spread them among students and local communities. Volunteering and democracy, respect to individuals, helping weak groups in the society and interaction with other civilians make you an active person. The indifference and apathy of grown-up people are reflected in the elections in European countries due to abstention in them. Abstention by young voters is even more disastrous as they should be voting for their future and should not be indifferent.The European Union and its institutions are a democratic field where cultures are entwined and people feel part of the same culture and civilization. That’s why the participation of people in democracy and active citizenship must begin from the bottom (but of high importance) of the pyramid of democracy. The activities of the project, intend to give the chance to the students to interact in different scales of society with those people who are active citizens and volunteering in a cause. They will have the opportunity to understand why someone needs to try for a certain goal and the benefits from this. The main objective of the project is to achieve active citizenship in the students of our partnership and spread those ideas to schools in the European Union. Specifically the project aims to create active democratic European citizens, sensible students for a democratic society, citizens with European ideas and culture, citizens dedicated to multicultural causes. At the same time we will try to remove apathy and indifference from students and create cores of active citizens and sources of ideas and helpful people. The project aims to ingrain the European values and ideas into the activities and meetings on active citizenship.The partner schools are: 1)Laniteio Lyceum Limassol, Cyprus2)Liceo Classico Linguistico Muratori, Modena, Italy3)Tukuma Raina gimnazija, Tukums, Latvia4)II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace Wladyslawa Reymonta, Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland5)SU""Hristo Smirnenskï"", Koynare, Bulgaria6)COLEGIUL TEHNIC TRAIAN VUIA, Oradea, RomaniaThe participating students are going to be 25 from each school and their ages are between 16-18. Profiles of the schools are very similar. Oradea is a vocational school with the same ages and interests and they are going to give an extra dimension to the project. The teachers responsible for the project are going to involve teams from their schools to work on different mobilities and activities in a growing teamwork. Participating students are going to be persons who show interest in helping others, or volunteering, or having the profile of a kind person who can be helpful but has not had the chance to get involved in such activities yet. Also partners are going to involve students with financial and learning difficulties on a 20% basis depending on the school profile. A main activity from every school is to start involving the students in a two (or more) year project which is going to be updated in every mobility by information, photos and feelings of the students. This activity will be a committee for the cause of the project involving teachers and students in a twinspace platform.Beyond that, the partners are going to host a four day mobility with a full programme of activities including interaction between students and the school committees (students are going to host students also), round table discussions, visits to individual active citizens, visits to local authorities, visits to refugee camps, government councils and parliaments of countries. The students will have workshops during the mobilities, mutual volunteering actions which are going to be uploaded on twinspace and on schools webpages.The main idea of the methodology is a close examination and exchange of good practices referring to the project title of active citizenship and experiencing the emotion of the volunteers. That's why we have a lot of mutual volunteering actions, workshops between the students, meetings with committees and active citizens, discussions about their role, round table discussions about conclusions of the visits and experiences. The students will interact and feel the importance of helping and being an active member of a society. We are especially going to emphasize pupils motivation and self-esteem, communication skills, innovation, self-confidence in using foreign languages, enhancement of tolerance and respect for other cultures, meeting new friends, new cross-curricular and building international networks of cooperating schools, creating active citizens.Finally, the long term benefits are the creation of a Europe of a common culture, values and ideas which aims towards a union of people who care about humanity."

The project 'Developing key students' competences and strengthening self-esteem through their personal development' focuses on the development of key competences among students as an important element of preparing them for adult life. This project involves secondary schools (mainly vocational and technical schools) from Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Lithuania, Spain and Poland. The proposing organization is located in Poland. Six actions are planned related to learning, teaching and training, including the first meeting in Poland, in which two teachers from each school will take part. Together, it was determined how important key roles in the teaching and learning process are key competences, while the project group agreed on the fact of struggling with problems resulting from the lack or insufficient implementation of key competences in the youth education process. Therefore, each of the partner schools indicated the most important problems that their students are facing during education. These problems can be divided into three main groups of key competences: social competences, mathematics and technology as well as language skills. Among social competences, partner schools and the applicant school exchange low self-esteem, lack of faith in one's own abilities, low ability to work in teams and lack of self-presentation skills. The main difficulties associated with mathematics and technology skills result from poorly developed creative thinking, low mathematical and IT competences. When it comes to language competences, students struggle to express their thoughts and opinions in their mother tongue and foreign languages.In addition to the emerging educational difficulties, each partner school has identified methods, tools and educational and upbringing programs that function in their facilities and contribute to the improvement of the quality of learning outcomes and develop key competences. Among these tools are tutoring tutoring, getting to know and working with such applications as: ONMAT, KAHOOT. EDPUZZLE, information and communication technologies, implementation of the STEM system combining natural and engineering subjects, workshops developing creativity, parental education program S.S.I.A preventing early termination of education and workshops with the trainer of self-presentation and rhetoric.The main objective of the project is to exchange good practices between teachers, in the first place taking part in particular stages of the project and then spreading the newly acquired skills among the schools' own communities and schools in the region. Each school will equip teachers who take part in the project with appropriate theoretical and practical preparation for further implementation of the method and tools for working with students. The products of the project activities are to be instructional videos, educational materials and improving the effectiveness of teaching in the field of science and foreign languages.

AVITAE was born out of our shared need to provide teachers and students with an entrepreneurial mindset, which means: an ability to tackle challenges in life, learning to focus and to work in team; to plan, risk, have a vision, to measure risks/benefits, to be creative and motivating, to use digital tools, to take on managerial roles and pursue professional success. This mindset is a way of being in life, an attitude to one’s “job”, mission and commitments, and not a tool-box for entrepreneurs exclusively. To achieve this aim, we have undergone a deep study of our common European roots, with a particular focus on the birth and development of the European entrepreneurial spirit; to enhance the project’s vision, we have organised the AVITAE team like the staff of a real company. The seven partner schools are both secondary (6) and vocational (1) schools, spread across Europe: they are located in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Denmark, Slovakia, Finland, and Spain (Canarias). The students taking part in AVITAE were aged 15-18. Following team-work modality, they have been involved in a variety of activities; here are the highlights: creation of the project brand (layout and graphics of the newspaper, project logo and mascot, AVITAE posters, leaflets and ads); creation of a 14-issue high-quality newspaper, in both digital and traditional format (a collected volume has been created too); the realization of a digital coin database expressing the strategic role money has played in the development of European entrepreneurship; the creation of 3-D models of ancient ships, inventions and buildings connected with trading; the organization of an international market, an “agorà” of the future, made of virtual markets, futuristic market prototypes and models, a table game on the trading history of the seven partner countries; an e-cooking book on revisited and newly branded ancient recipes; videos and animations on the life of famous entrepreneurs from the seven countries, of past and present times; last but not least, the creation of real mini-companies making real profits. Six short-term exchanges have taken place to let students work side by side, exchange ideas, share and discuss the results of their work, practise their English, and acquire a better and more direct knowledge of their partners’ heritage and history of enterprise culture. The AVITAE Twinspace and Website have also been created to work as virtual meeting places for students and teachers, and as the project’s main disseminating tool. AVITAE has managed to promote an innovative approach to Europe’s classical and non classical trading heritage, and to teaching and learning models at large; focusing on the entrepreneurial mindset, it has enhanced cooperative, team-based learning and enterprise culture in the young, in order to make them more aware of their common roots, and more communicative and competitive individuals in the job market.