"Volunteering is a sense of purpose.Volunteering is a work of heart.Volunteering is at the very core of being a human.Volunteering shapes a person’s heart, mind, and soul. Volunteering provides entirely beneficial, life-changing experiences and memories that can be cherished forever - with our project we aim to give our students the opportunity to experience all the benefits of volunteering and the chance to make a real difference. This is a strategic partnership that focuses on increasing volunteering awareness among teenagers, on bringing awareness to international volunteering activities, by creating opportunities with social interaction and inter-cultural dialogue. We aim to do a call for action through raising awareness of volunteerism, adding an incentive to voluntary work, and creating an environment where teenagers can feel the sense of belonging.This project will strengthen the teenager's appreciation of cultural diversity, sense of initiative and foster their understanding of equality throughout Europe. It will also foster stronger participation of young people in democratic and civic life in Europe, strengthen the European dimension in the participating schools, enhancing their capacity for cross-border cooperation.The project addresses a target group of teenagers, who are 16-18 years, including teenagers with fewer opportunities.The project also addresses teachers in our schools, who will supervise and take active part in all project activities. We have planned 3 student exchanges and 2 Joint Staff- 60 students and 42 teachers will join the transnational activities. Getting involved in volunteering activities will boost teenagers’ confidence and self-esteem, give them chance to build new skills and to develop the ones they already have, to show initiative, to gain positive mental health/wellbeing. Doing volunteering activities in international teams during transnational meetings(in Special Education Centre, Animal Welfare Association, nursery home for old people, in the kindergarten, recycling plant, National Parks and Reserves) disseminating them, sharing our practices and impressions, being the role models for others will definitely bring awareness to international volunteering activities, will add much international value to all the participants, fostering their internationalisation. Doing environmental volunteering activities outdoors (Santana Madeira Biosfera Heritage, National Park of Cala Mondrago, Cabrera, Dragonera, Serra de Tramuntana(World Heritage Site by UNESCO) will increase participants’ environmental awareness and consciousness, their connection with nature and motivate them to act in a more environmentally-friendly way. Volunteering activities will also address to develop communication in foreign language, social/civic competences, which will help teenagers to become active European citizens, who take an active interest in the civic, cultural, social and moral welfare of the community. In the form of non-formal education project volunteering activities will serve as a vehicle for solidarity, social inclusion, active citizenship and enable teenagers to acquire essential competences that will contribute to their personal and socio-educational development.With in-school activities, we will provide extracurricular learning events for the students. The students will take responsibilities and will turn their ideas into action, which will give them sense of initiative; personal expression, critical thinking. These activities involve preparing Erasmus+ corner/project corner, developing and designing posters and brochures on the topics, making a research on volunteering, preparing presentations about schools, countries, volunteering organisations, volunteering opportunities, preparing debates, developing and designing of our tangible output""Call to Action Guide”, creating of Multilingual Dictionary, Travel Manuals, Erasmus+ Magazines will be created after every LTTA, where students will share their impressions, experiences, opinions, photographs. Project activities/results and outcomes are going to be published on project website, eTwinning/TwinSpace, Erasmus+Project ResultsPlatform, Facebook page, instagram, local newspapers.The results and impact of this project will be lifelong and will bring enrichment to all the participants, participating organisations and target groups. Volunteering and intercultural awareness will be increased and internationalisation of the participants will be fostered.Teenagers will gain understanding that volunteering provides beneficial and life-changing experiences, gives the opportunity to make a real difference, they will use their civic responsibility, they will gain feeling of being valued/a part of a team, their key competencies will be enhanced, they will build on exciting experiences, help others less fortunate and help environment, they will use their opportunity to give something back to the community - and it is both challenging and rewarding."

"The fundamental objective of the Turkish Ministry of National Education’s 2023 Education Vision is that children should be equipped with the skills required for both the present day and the future and that they should grow into sensitive, qualified, moral individuals able to use these skills for the good of humanity, passionate about knowledge and interested in culture. Also, European union recommended having cultural heritage at the very core of education and not as a stopgap and seeing education more deeply rooted in cultural heritage through adequate and efficient mutual long-term partnership policies. According to the findings of the Research for CULT Committee- Education in Cultural Heritage Report (2018) Cultural heritage education enhances people’s capability to become not only fulfilled citizens able to live in society but also responsible citizens regarding the protection of cultural heritage. And dynamizing the cultural heritage educations and partnership in this area is strongly urged in the same research paper. Rather than making students passive and information recipient individuals, we should put some effort to make them active citizens who are aware of a common cultural heritage. We should build a caring society to heritage/ art works and tolerant, respectful adults via these educations. But these museum educations/ trips require time, money, efficient, properly trained teachers, and shared responsibilities. At this point, we attach a lot of importance to museum education, and integrate it to the curriculums with extra efforts. Museums offer a variety of educational opportunities for teachers to impart awareness of country’s cultural values in children and encourage their appreciation of culture and art. From every reference guides, it can be clearly seen that, the educational programs, institutions should coorperate with museums and one another to have a common heritage understanding and actively integrate heritage education to their curriculum. Following the recommendations of Cultural Heritage Report, we designed many museum based activities in Project process both in in-school activiites and multinational activities.In school activities are clustered around themes, which are negotiated with partners in planning period. The partner schools are to make similar activities in their local museums, elaborate the activities via evaluation forms, prooduce outcomes and then share their work in Twinspace. The participant students will engage in many meaningful activities to reach the final outcomes of the Project, such as digital catalogues of the museums, museum memory cards, virtual school museums, student museum portfolios, family logs, school wallcharts etc... The partners are chosen regarding 3 criteria; 1. Having a school policy about museum education, 2. Being able to offer a theme and activities about their hosting LTT, 3. Having experience in producing the outcomes that are on their responsibility. Thus, 4 partner, representing different cultures and nationality are added to the Project to achieve cultural richness. The partners are Turkey, Denmark, Italy, and Lithuania. Each partner offered a theme regarding their strenghts,2museums and organized a number of ateliers, workshops and museum based activities regarding the theme offered. The themes of the LTTs are 1st LTT – Teacher Training Session(1 teacher from each country) ; 2nd LTT – Cultural Heritage in Turkey (2 teachers and 5 students) ; 3rd LTT is Heritage of Art in Italy (2 teachers and 5 students),4th LTT is Ethnographic and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Lithuania (2 teachers and 5 students) ; 5th Heritage of Daily Living in Denmark(2 teachers and 5 students).In each LTT, the host students will actively make presentations, form multinational groups and achieve some pre planned tasks in these multinational groups. Multinational activities are including costume design with the patterns from ""pattern hunting ""activity, recreating art works, making masks, tanning leather, impressing seals, museum of suitcases, animating rituals. In the project e twinning platform will be used extensively, in planning period, in sharing in school activities, in evaluating the task, in preparation to LTT phase, sharing the outcomes and in disseminating the results of the project. For dissemination, there will be a teachers’ seminar in each partner country, a teachers group will be formed in e twinning and all the documents, evaluation rubrics will be shared in that platform. The web site of the project will be on air for 3 years and the results will be shared there. In addition to the concrete results, there will be some abstract results and these results will be the conscious members of society about heritage, an awareness on utilizing the museums as an teaching environment for educators, increased cooperation and international experience, high tolerance towards diversity and deep understanding of the concept of heritage."

"Social integration of refuees is a complex and gradual process with legal, economic, social and cultural dimensions. It imposes demands on the receiving society. Refugees are often presented as vulnerable, poor, benefit-dependent and a potential social and economic threat to the receiving society. This affect how local communities receive refugees and makes their social inclusion into the receiving country very difficult.At this point, the governments may take actions, implement policies or develop mentorship programmes but the real voice of refugees can only be heard in the streets, schools. In this gradual process, the young members of the society should definitely take roles to welcome newcomers to the community. Before they are exposed to the flood of news, biased remarks of the media and politicians, they should form their own opinion, have a deep insight to the refugees, and focus on the humanitarian side of refugees and how to make the community they live together better.In this Project, as the young members of the societies of hosting nations, firstly, we focused on listening the voice of refugees, developing an empaty, making a reflection of each nations attitudes to refugees and show a reaction by writing, illustrating and designing children stories about refugees as the first step. To reach this aim, we will integrate many disciplines to the Project process including foreign language competence, art/literature competence, writing competence in both mother tongue and in foreign language. The participant students will engage in many meaningful activities to reach the final outcome of the Project, such as making interviews with refugee peers to decide the topic of their books,joining a number of seminars by the experts such as a children’s book author, illustrator and bibliotherapist.As the 2nd step of the Project, the students will colloborate with a Turkish primary school to see if their story book will have an effect on the perceptions of the primary sch students. They will conduct a pre test to define the kids perceptions of the “concept of refugees”. After the reading sessions, a post test will be conducted and they will analyse tha data gathered from both tests. Thus, the participant schools will have produced an academic poster at the end of the Project.While carrying out this project, 5 partners will work together, involving Turkey, Italy,Romania, Denmark and Portugal.Italy worked on an etwinning project called ""Stories to be Told"" which can be seen as the first step of this project in 2017-2018 years. The project was awarded with 4 national and a European label and was among the first 200 projects in Turkey and also given""a special category award"" in Romania. Portugal and Denmark are added to enrich the activities and disseminate the books throughout Europe.Also, according to the statistics of UNCHR Turkey hosted the largest number of refugees worldwide, with 2.9 million people, while the rest of the European countries hosted 2.3 million refugees. So, healthy integration of refugees is a key issue in Turkey. With the implications of this e twinning project, the partners agree to take a step forward and enhance the number of stories and work in mixed groups rather than work in schools. Adding a primary school to the Project is a crucial when the evaluation of final outcome is considered. Improvement the perception of kids is one the main aim of this project. Short term exchange of pupils will be in Romania, Portugal and Italy and there will be 2 short term exchange of teachers, kick off meeting in Turkey and final meeting in Denmark.At 1st LTT of pupils, the students will write children's stories about the difficulties that the refugges experienced; 2nd LTT will be drawing session for pupils. They will put their art skills into practice and illustrate the stories and at the last pupils' LTT they will make the graphic design of the books. The results can be divided into two categories; CONCRETE RESULTS which includes high level use of e-twinning portal, Project logo, slogan, leaflets and blogpage, Project corners, story book, Efficacy questionnaires, seminars given by experts, and an action research article/ posters; ABSTRACT RESULTS are conscious members of society about the refugees, an awareness on the difficulties experienced by the refugees, increased cooperation and international experience, high tolerance towards diversity and deep understanding of the concept of being a refugee."

It is a well - known fact that the waste generation rates of organic, non-organic and human-produced waste are continuously rising. This is due to the fast rate of population growth and urban development that generate consequences proved by statistics which show that every 500 million people living in European Union produce about 500 kilos of household rubbish annually. Consequently, the management and disposal process of such a large amount of waste will result in serious environmental effects. Landfills are running out of space and this method may pose health risks by polluting the soil, water and air while disposal of waste through incineration method may release toxic pollutant emissions into the atmosphere. EU member states have adopted a series of waste management policies with the aim to reduce environmental and health impact of waste and improve efficiency of EU’s resources. We, the five partner schools, have set up this partnership to increase awareness and produce positive changes in young people’s attitudes through a series of activities that call for active engagement and citizenship.Thus, we strongly believe that with the support of this Erasmus+ project, today’s students will grow into responsible adult citizens who will tackle the issue of waste management and become knowledgeable about real life concepts of environmental stewardship.OBJECTIVES01-to enhance active participation and citizenship amongst group of participants02-to raise students’ environmental awareness in regard to current global issues03-to foster transferability of waste management and pedagogical practices to generate positive changes04-to implement personalized waste management schemes in partner schools05-to enhance intercultural awareness, tolerance and respect for cultural diversity06-to engage participants in activities that relate to creativity, critical thinking and team work skillsACTIVITIESC1 Waste management policies in effect in partner countriesC2 Reduce today for a better tomorrow C3 Reuse today for a better tomorrowC4 Recycle & Recreate for a better tomorrowC5 Feasible home and school-based waste management strategiesWe will apply the following methodology: analysis report of present waste management policies and situations in partner countries, local and international activities with concrete solutions to reduce waste, creation of a comprehensive waste management guide to be applied at home and in schools.PARTICIPANTSThe direct beneficiaries in the project will be students aged 16-18, approximately 500students at partnership level. Participants will form the active group in the project and be organized in Eco Patrols to work on project tasks. The patrols will focus on specific tasks which students can join according to interest, skills, capacity to achieve them. They will be coordinated and supported by teachers in project team, who will supervise their activity and ensure the materials and activities are qualitative and produce the expected results. The project team of teachers in each school will consist of minimum 5 teachers who teach subjects related to project topics (English, Geography, Art, etc) but also teachers with experience in implementing school projects on similar topics.Other students and school staff in partner schools and outside the school, students’ families, members in the local and wider community, stakeholders will benefit from project results, products through dissemination, spread of results, activities and events.RESULTSIntangible results: knowledge, skills, attitudes, increased environmental consciousness, enhanced active engagement and citizenship, good practice exchange. Tangible results include: evaluation forms, topic presentations and reports, digital magazine, students’ diaries, campaigns, surveys, newsletter, leaflets, DIY project brochure, posters, waste management guide, project logo, website, twin space and social media page, magnets, items made of recyclable and reused materials and objects.IMPACT AND BENEFITSThe project will equip participants with the knowledge to apply effective waste management strategies to reduce their carbon footprint and actively contribute to environmental preservation schemes.These will be reflected in the range of concrete activities organized at school level, in their communities.They will be inspiring models for peers and the project will generate further multiplied positive results with future generations of students due to project sustainability plan.Teachers will develop their pedagogical portfolio and increase capacity to devise personalized engaging activities to suit their students’ profile and teach them lifelong skills. School staff will be equipped with project management skills to extend their partners network and set up future international cooperation projects. The project will stimulate participants to act as global multipliers in the education field in their own organisation, at regional and European level.

"After the first QUAL4T project, that focused on quality awareness by individual teachers, it deemed only a small step to a follow-up project named: Further Quality Improvement in European VET, guiding teacher Teams in their strategic planning (QUAL4T2). In QUAL4T2 the project partners aimed to contribute directly to the improvement of outcomes of quality systems in Europe's institutes, by investing in teachers’ professionalization to develop more effectiveness and involvement of teachers/trainers in the quality strategic planning. After evaluation and analyses, as a follow up teams need to set aims and plan actions for further improvement. In the 0-questionnaire teachers stated that they feel they don’t have enough knowledge and tools to write a good year plan, and that often they daubt if they are performing the right actions for the aimed improvement or change. So the project partners started to develop products fitting with the needs of the teacher teams!Quality guide and toolkit for teamsThe guide and tools were first developed in a pilot version, so that they could be tested and improved. After the pilot in the five partner organisations we could conclude that the Quality tools and the guide that we tested, inluenced both the teamculture as the efficiency of the team plan in a positive way! Nevertheless, the partners from Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and Italy asked the teams once more for feedback, and guide and tools have been improved for the final version. The Greek partner desided as an extra to test a number of tools as well, delivering extra input for the final versions. The transnational pilot report gathered all the outcomes of the pilots per partner, and also overall outcomes. SWOT analyses have been included in all partner chapters. The themes for the Qality tools are: A - Working on a quality culture for teams, B - Tools for an effective team year-plan and C - Team plan models. Tools from these theme's are for instance: Lighthouse, Feedback giving, Route to a team plan and Risk analysing. All tools have been published in Word-documents, so that teacher teams have the option to adapt the tools to their own situation.Story book This good practice guide is built up as a story book. In this book, readers travel through five Vocational Education and Training organisations in five European countries (NL, ES, EL, DK and IT) and enjoy the stories gained from teacher teams. Readers learn about the frustrations when something did not go as well expected… Share the euphoria when a success was reached… Enjoy these precious stories in which teams really move forward to further excellence in Vocational Education and Training! The Story Book includes many pictures of teams in action. It provides easy to read experiences, and may help other teams in Europe in their travel towards a good team plan.Training programmeFinally a five day transnational training programme took place in Rome, for a mixed group of partners' staff, thus preparing the participants to be ambassadors for the project after the project ends. All participants in the training event found the project results very relevant for their work. Some were less experienced and they were very happy with the training. Even the more experienced mentioned that they found very useful the exchange and they learned about new tools to implement in their quality assurance system. Based on the revised training, a program was developed that is available online for all EU schools or training centres. Like all the final products the training program options have been published on the website www.qual4t-project.org free for use. But also through the EACEA disseminiation platform, European schoolgateway and websites as EQAVET and EfVET the project products can be found.EvaluationThe project meetings and the project process and products were all evaluated with the aim to further improve after reflection of the previous period. One partner testimonial in the latest evaluation: ""In this final semester of the project it is possible to reflect on the reactions of the target group. It is difficult to score the Quality guide, as this guide is integrated in the explanation of the three themes of the Qualty tools. The tools are the real documents that teams use, and with the explanation of the guide the combination is very effective. This is the same for the Story Book, being a red line in workshops, integrating tools where needed, depending on the target groups. In the end, we always return to the office empty handed, while we took extra hard copies with us to workshops… ImpactIn all partner organisations a sustainable impact has shown. Besided this, also expected impact is shown on national level. The seven Multiplier Events prommiss good mainstreaming after the project life time and a new transnational training has been planned for 2020! Altogether QUAL4T2 project helped to make VET a bit more attractive!"