What is Best project? Introducing ourselves
Let's play the Fraternity card in Europe is a project implemented in France, Spain, Poland, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia within the Erasmus+ programme. It was originally designed in 2002 in France by the La ligue de L'ensignement and has since been conducted every year in France as an educational response to growing negative social trends including racism and exclusion. The project emphasizes the importance of coexistence of various ideas, religions, races, status groups etc. through an simple activity of sending messages of solidarity from school students to random people in their communities, resembling the idea of a 'message in a bottle'. Students are trained in critical thinking and photo analyses prior to writing their messages of solidarity. With their teachers they cover topics of discrimination, migration, poverty, volunteering etc. Recipients of the postcards are invited to share their response to the coordinating organizations - La ligue de L'ensignement in France, Centre for Peace Studies in Croatia, Foundacion Cives in Spain and Fundacja Szkoła z Klasą in Poland. In school year 2017/2018 approximately 150 000 pupils participated in the project and sent their postcards.
Our basic idea - work on global issues with students and send postcards with messages of solidarity to their local communities
La Ligue de l’enseignement – France
The Ligue de l'enseignement is one of the most important organizations in France in the field of non-formal education. Founded in 1866, it aims to ensure access to education for all, regardless of age, social origin and ethnicity. It also promotes a secular society, solidarity among citizens and active citizenship. The 102 federations of La Ligue de l'enseignement and its 30,000 member organizations carry out activities in the fields of culture, education and lifelong learning, culture and the media, social work, recreational-educational activities, the environment and sustainable development, sport for all, and international solidarity.
Fundacion CIVES – Spain
The Cives Foundation has worked for more than ten years to achieve full citizenship in a Social and Democratic State of Law. Specialized in promoting education in values, the Cives Foundation is committed to education as a means to create citizens with strong democratic values based on solidarity, critical thinking, interculturality and tolerance. Its fields of action are, on the one hand, the training of teachers in education for democratic citizenship and human rights and, on the other hand, the promotion of European citizenship through initiatives that aim to bring citizens closer to the EU institutions and contribute to the consolidation of a more participatory democracy.
CMS, Center for Peace Studies - Croacia
Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) is non-profit citizen association working on social change based on the principles of non-violence, peace building and respect of human rights, combining education, research, advocacy and activism. CPS is focusing on policy and activism based researches in the field of human rights, peace building and education; also works on promoting and supporting values of non-violence, justice, respect of human rights and acceptance/tolerance of differences.Centre for Peace Studies three main programmes: Fight against xenophobia, racism and ethnic discrimination; Peace education and promotion of non-violence; Promotion of social and economic solidarity and Human security programme.
School with Class Foundation – Poland
The School with Class Foundation is an expert, non-profit organization based in Warsaw, Poland. Our team is composed of professionals with experience in the field of education and in managing innovative projects on a national scale. The School with Class Foundation was founded in October 2015 and is an offshoot of the largest and one of the most successful educational programs in Poland, run since 2002 by the Center for Citizenship Education and "Gazeta Wyborcza" (national magazine) - with over 8,500 schools, 100,000 teachers and one million students.
The purpose of the School with Class Foundation is: to support education adapted to the modern world, open schools committed to solving social problems; to promote the development of 21st century skills in Polish schools; to improve the quality of teacher training and professional development; to raise the prestige of the teaching profession, to highlight and promote the activities of school principals, teachers and others who act for the benefit of good education in Poland and abroad; to equalize educational opportunities for children and youth; to strengthen the civic mission of the school, to create links between schools and local communities.
Humanitas, Centre for global learning - Slovenia
Humanitas is a non-governmental organization founded in 2000. Its main mission is to raise awareness about global issues and to promote social inclusion and responsibility. Its main activities are global education, development cooperation projects, and fair trade. The NGO runs global education workshops and intercultural workshops on human rights, prejudice, stereotypes, hate speech, discrimination and migration in schools (for teachers and children). At the international level, Humanitas actively participates in the EPTO network (European peer training organization), which organizes training courses against discrimination. Humanitas is also a national representative in the CONCORD HUB 4 working group on education for global citizenship and public engagement. Humanitas is one of the founders of the Slovenian NGO platform SLOGA and coordinates its working group on world education. Humanitas is part of this project because it sincerely believes in solidarity and cooperation based on informed action. Thus, Humanitas sees an added value in this project and its objective, which is closely related to its work in schools.
ARCI A.P.S. - Italy
Associazione Arci is an Italian social promotion organization founded in 1957. It is available all over the Italian territory, with approximately one million members, 17 regional committees, 115 local committees, and 4,400 recreational and cultural clubs. Its main fields of intervention are:
- Culture: Arci’s mission is to offer recreational and cultural opportunities (music literature, dance, theatre, film festivals, courses, cultural programs,...).
- Educational, training and research: the contents deal both with cultural issues (music, drama activities, literature, video, languages, etc.) and social ones (ad-hoc courses to train specific publics such as social operators, intercultural operators,...).
- Immigration, right to asylum and fight against all forms of discriminations and racism: awareness campaigns, empowerment of migrants, support for self-organization of migrants...
In the last 5 years, Arci has realised a significant number of educational activities within schools to reinforce young people's social competences. The guiding thread of these activities involving school students consists in educating the new generations to respect diversity and to fight discriminations against people of foreign origin, by deconstructing stereotypes and breaking the beliefs determined by ignorance and fear.