Critical thinking represents a self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically and consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. Through this project, we want to offer our students the chance to discover themselves as young citizens who are capable of thinking creatively, critically, who know their role and possibilities in the democratic processes they are affected by. We want them to know that they are in charge of their own future and they should not let themselves be manipulated by others. They will create their own network of Active citizens and will communicate about the pressing issues of the world today on their own forum.We are addressing a target group of 300 students of different specialisations in our schools, boys and girls, mainstream students or students belonging to disadvantaged groups, who are 15-18 years old. They will be at the core of the activities, as we intend to make a long-lasting impact on them. The project also addresses 50 teachers in our schools, who will turn the project results into long-term practices at local levels, will coordinate students' activity and guide them, monitor them and act as aresource.ObjectivesThe objectives of the project are:- to develop students' critical thinking, leadership, communication and social skills- to make student gets more involved in the community life- to lay the basis for students' autonomy in thinking and action- to promote European values - tolerance, respect, democracy, active citizenship- to promote intercultural learning- to facilitate the exchange of ideas and the cooperation between European studentsMain activitiesThe project will include four exchanges during which students will interact, communicate, exchange ideas, put forwards arguments and counterarguments based on statistical data, assess the situations comparatively, participate in role-plays, simulations, interviews. Each team of students will do research on the topic of the exchange, so that the meeting will be productive and a qualitative exchange of information is facilitated.There are 5 exchanges with the following topics:C1 - ImmigrationC2 –Human rightsC3 - DemocracyC4 - DiscriminationC5 –Civic involvementMethodologyBefore the exchanges, students will work intensively on the topic of the exchange and will collect data at local level in order to provide an informed presentation of the situation during the exchange. To do this, they will do research, apply surveys, take interviews, contact NGOs active in that field, collect data, analyse, assess and draw conclusions. During the exchanges, they will present their research work, analyse the data from other countries comparatively, participate in debates, in engaging activities which are meant to improve their critical thinking skills, meet local authorities and discuss the issues to see the opinion of a politician on those matters.Results and impactStudents will develop autonomy and critical thinking, be more aware of their rights, duties and their power to decide for themselves, get involved in the community life, develop professional, personal, interpersonal skills and intercultural competence. They will acquire European values, such as tolerance, respect, active citizenship. Tangible results include the recordings of debates, presentations, research work, the collection of activities for developing critical thinking skills, the platform for students. The project is expected to have a wide impact through the students' platform, dissemination activities and materials published on a variety of online spaces. Besides students, there will be teachers, parents, institutions and local communities who benefit from the project results in one way or another. Teachers will diversify their teaching materials and improve their communication, organisational and teamwork skills. Schools will improve their human resources, attain more cohesion, gain a positive image and will strengthen the relations with local authorities and NGOs, parents will become more involved in the school life and will appreciate the role of the school in the shaping of their children's individuality.

The background for this project is that being a citizen in the European Economic Area involves a wide range of possibilities, responsibilities and commitments to Europe. The overall objective is for the students to fully comprend what being a European citizen entail. And to realise the responsibilities and opportunities there are in being the first generation to eradicate powerty globally and the last generation able to do anything about the environmental challenges. Another important goal of the Project is to make youngster more open minded towards the positive impact it can bring of working together in a United Europe. The idea of making this an inter European project is that the students can before and between meeting points dig into the matter from their nationality’s perspective on the topic’s presented below. All the students will work with all the topics. Questions the students has to reflect are: How is the topic addressed in their local and national press? Are there any differences in focus? The attention the topic receives in the country of the students? Are there any similarities? What can be the reasons for the similarities and differences? Each country has a special responsibility to present and enlighten one of the topics presented below:- Sustainable development, Slovenia -Education and the Labour marked, Spain-Immigration and integration, NorwayThe students will present their work for the other students. Each School Meeting will produce reflecting blogs on the topic of the project meetings and publishing the student presentations. The concret results we would like to produce are for European Students and teachers to understand that we are all part of a larger community that is wider than our national boarder and that our lives are intertwined. We share not only boarders and a common history, but we are all affected by the economic developments, the policy making, how we spend our resources, as in sustainable development, our outlook on immigration and how we can be mobile across Europe in terms on education and worklife. There will be 69 participants in total in the Project period which will be in the duration of 24 months. All participating Schools are state run secondary Schools.The envisaged result is that the students should be more aware of the active role they can play in shaping Europe. How they With Critical thinking skills, Cooperation skills and problem-solving skills can make a brighter and more sustainable future. We would like them to experience that they, and their action matters!The long-term result of the project is expecting the students to become an active European citizen, understanding the impact they can make in shaping the future in a positive way for the European society.The teachers in the project will collaborate and exchange experience with other teachers and give the opportunity to developing new teaching practices. All institutions will actively work to motivate this and to spread new practice to all the other high schools in our counties.

"The Project ”Intercultural Creative Art Bridge” is going to be implemented by a partnership consisting of seven secondary schools from different European countries - Lithuania, Turkey, Hungary, France, Estonia, Slovenia and Finland. All of the partners are state general education schools. Our project's context is art, endangered art-culture, the implementation of ""Four Cs=creativity, critical thinking, collaboration communication"" of 21st century skills into general education, art-cultural education at schools, the role of art and cultural education in shaping young people in a comprehensive way. Getting to know the culture and the arts of other nations we are going to build awareness of similarities and differences among nations, to fight stereotypes, to form attitudes of tolerance, openness and respect of the right of others to be different, to form resources about dying out art and culture for transferring them to the next generations. In a way, the project is also community-centered. By collaboration with various local institutions and informal groups of people doing things together we hope to enhance the local social capital in our city and make it a better place to live. In general, we expect the project to be an extremely stimulating and developing experience for the students that will change their attitudes and perception of the world, influence their life choices, give them the drive to pursue their aims, bring out their hidden Four Cs and help them to become active and conscious members of their local communities and nations and truly European citizens. It will be a two-year project. We are going to carry out three transnational meetings. In these three transnational meetings only two teachers will join the meeting. Two students and two teachers for each country will join in another four project meetings, We are planning to deal with various forms of arts and endangered art and culture such as dance, songs, poetry, portrait painting, drama, film, photography, visual arts and using them to trigger and develop artistic and cultural perspective of students, to help them enriching and bringing out their hidden Four Cs. By using non-academic activities of artistic creations we want to attract the high intelligence students who don't have time to bring out their skills or the students who don't want to participate in the social activities or who see the arts unnecessary because of the technological development, who are marginalised at school and local community, and give them a chance to feel important, building their personality and self-confidence. Moreover, working together with representatives of other nations' art and culture institutions we are going to raise awareness of linguistic, artistic and cultural diversity of Europe. We are planning to create the following joint end products: the logo of the project, the anthem of the project, a joint drama play, a joint poetry book, a film showing students of all partner schools dancing folk dances, a photo album presenting endangered music instruments and DVD accompanied with their music, a photo album showing the endangered art, a photo album of endangered culture, a humor magazine with caricature portraits album showing the students own creation and a set of lesson plans. To achieve this, we are going to use various kinds of activities, such as workshops, group work, competitions, exhibitions, collaboration with other institutions like other schools in our localities, culture centres, music schools, cinemas, amateur theatres, dance groups, music bands, children homes, old people homes. The activities are aimed not only to create the end products, but most of all to form attitudes of entrepreneurship and leadership, to teach teamwork skills and ability to perform well in new situations and to cooperate with people of different backgrounds. Conducting lessons in museums, art galleries and other cultural institutions, as well as using existing resources of culture and the arts in different ways, we want to form a sense of national identity. The methodologies that we will carry out are: Enquiry-based learning approach, Question-answer, Discussion, brainstorming, hands-on method and place-based education to ensure active involvement of the students in the activities. The project is student-centered, both in terms of our aims and the students’ involvement in almost all project activities at all stages - from preparation to evaluation and dissemination of its results. Finally, the school as an institution, maintaining some curricula changes, new extracurricular activities, as well as newly gained contacts and forms of cooperation with external institutions, will be able to offer a chance for comprehensive development to new students and keep its position of modern, different, model European school."

The project is a reflection of an important global issue, the solution of which could be found for a given region with the participation of at least several countries. Common issues unite people and motivate them to look for common solutions. Harmony between the human creator and the human being is needed. The primary objective of this project, which includes six schools from six different countries, is to help form an ecological attitude towards nature. The participants will focus their efforts on modern man and make him change his attitude to the habitable world because the trouble of modern man is that he has become a consumer of nature. This is a project that will raise the question for the responsibility to the next generations. Its aim is to help young people change not only their attitude towards nature, but also to make adjustments to ethics and their value systems. Therefore each partner will explore the renewable energy sources in his region or country and will present them to his project partners and all of them together at a round table will look for answers to questions like: How to save energy at home and at school, what and how to recycle, how to store energy? This is a project that aims at alarming as many people as possible in Europe. That’s why, we will make an interactive map of the renewable energy sources in the region where students live, in order to stimulate their interest in green energy. During the trainings we will visit a photovoltaic or a wind farm in the given region to find out about the benefits of this energy. This will also help form a civic position and a desire for coping with the apathy of modern man, who lives with the thought that this does not affect him and nothing depends on him. In addition, we will make sure to include students with special educational needs to find their place in the project and not to feel isolated, unworthy and a burden to society. They will gather materials for recycling and disseminate brochures. Our project will act as a call for help and as a result we expect to educate young people with an active civic position. Once the project is completed, students’ participation in civic initiatives for the promotion of renewable energy will be the proof that we have achieved our primary goal and have signaled that there is still a chance for the Earth to be saved before it is too late. The project will encourage multicultural education, tolerance and will also provoke desire in each participant to preserve nature and seek alternative energy sources. We hope this desire to be contagious and to attract more and more people to the ideas of the project. One of the best activities will be publishing students’ essays in a collection. The beginning that we set for our ‘green initiatives’ will be followed by new similar acts that will be spread like a domino. Learning, teaching and training activities will bring together pupils and teachers from different European countries, and this will help the collaboration of people belonging to different cultures. This cooperation will definitely be very useful and innovative and will help build trust and respect among all participants. After each training meeting, where students will demonstrate the acquired skills, we will give them a certificate ‘Responsible for the Future’, certifying the following skills: creativity, active citizenship, defending a position and making quick decisions, logical and creative thinking. Each creative product will receive a certificate. We will try to teach our students to think creatively and critically about issues related to alternative energy sources. Students will gain confidence that they know and can be responsible and that they are part of the future of the world. It is becoming more and more evident that conventional education can no longer provide optimal knowledge for modern society. Therefore, we will apply new, interactive practices at our training meetings which operate on a principle, different from the one so far. We would also like to apply an alternative approach to the learning process. We will cooperate with non-governmental organizations, local student parliaments, local formal and informal institutions and schools in the region to disseminate the project results and products. The sustainability of the project will be ensured by shooting films during meetings which will be available on CDs for each participant. The products from recycled materials will be distributed after project’s end, too, because we believe that perseverance and tenacity are what is needed for the successful realization of our common goal.