"The main objective of this project entitled ""The well-being of man and his fulfillment by and with nature"" is the exchange of good practices, especially in the field of horticulture and from the point of view of the good human being and his fulfillment by and with nature.This partnership will not only help to broaden the horizons of young, future professionals in the field of horticulture, but also those of teachers.As partners from different European countries in different parts of Europe have developed different experiences in this field, they want to share them with students and teachers from other European horticultural schools as part of this project.The international exchange of good practices during activities will contribute to the meeting, the sharing of experiences and the acquisition of new skills that will also strengthen European unity.The project involves 4 European horticultural schools in Belgium, France, Spain and Latvia and English has been chosen as the communication language. Teachers and students in horticulture, landscape architecture, nursery, florist, farmer and other related educational programs will be associated to share their knowledge and skills and thus acquire new experiences and introduce them into a learning process and a subsequent work environment.In addition to the 85 participants involved in learning activities, there are about 60 students and some colleagues directly involved in the schools that organize the activity. Approximately 200 students will benefit after the return of participants directly from their sharing of experiences and achievements.The know-how acquired during international activities will be introduced in the following lessons and so colleagues and classmates who could not participate in the mobility will have the chance to benefit from the participants' achievements.Students with international experience are more competitive in the job market, more motivated to pursue their professional studies and to be more confident in starting their business.In addition to these rather intellectual results some physical results will be produced together during the common practical activities: the bio-constructions, the vegetal mass of interior plants, the arrangements of parcels of permaculture and the therapeutic garden.These results will remain visible for years after the conclusion of this partnership and will remind or inform future passers-by of the partnership's implementation.As a result of the publications, these thematic innovations will be reflected in the media, in the school home pages and on the Internet, which will inform a wide range of people, both professionals and those interested in gardening and the well-being of people thanks to the nature and thanks to the work of the gardeners."

"Mens fervida in corpore sano: Learning through food and physical activity. As the project title suggests, the emphasis has been on activities that form the building blocks of everyday life and which interest young people. Moreover, the innovative approach based on mentor groups, social media, students' video material to get them to speak and not just write, and games, has made this project fun for teachers and students, both of whom were the learners in this project. Indeed, thanks to new technologies and improved concertation systems with school management, this project contributed to a sustainable environment that embraces the positive potential of our changing world, without rejecting our rich cultural heritage--which includes food. In addition, students have learned that they live in a world of many colours, shapes and forms, and by learning about and from disabled athletes, the able-bodied have discovered a little bit more about themselves, including discipline, a balanced diet and what physical activity is best for them. What's more, by becoming part of an international team, they have pushed themselves to communicate and interact in new ways, honing life skills. These competences have been noticeable as they rubbed shoulders with people in the world of work such as publishers, local elected representatives, nutritionists, top chefs and journalists. Thanks to their first-hand experience, some of our students are now pursuing a career path in these fields.In total, over thirty students were directly involved with the project, with 22 of them able to travel at least once to the international training workshops. Working with them as mentors were a team of 12 teachers, thus allowing a European initiative to become a real focus for the life of the school. In addition, in each country students worked with at least one journalist and met with career sportsmen and women and nutritionists to learn about exercise and diet. Having said that, for most, the highlight of their two-year project has been food--unsurprising for teenagers!Indeed, not only have students discovered lots about nutrition and their own regional dishes, they have learned to cook and share the experience with people from a different country. While Spanish students won our coveted overall Erasmus+ Eurochef 2017 competition, the French students won Best Dish with their Praline Pie. There has been so much for them to take pride in, including their contributions published in the English-language cookery book. Students in each country have also gained invaluable entrepreneurial experience by drawing up a business plan and working on marketing the cookery books. But more than anything else, they have found out how to operate as an international team, learning to listen carefully to one another, to concede a point or to boost a team member short of encouragement. And they now realise that attention to detail, whether it be in producing high-quality publicity for public meetings or a carefully worded letter to a local elected representative, is often the key to success.Students, teaching staff, senior leadership and outside sources (press and other professionals) have all been forthright with their praise for this multifected project. While occasionally activities needed to be speeded up to make sure everything was done within the time frame, all the core activities were finished to a high standard--especially for high school students. There is much for all involved to be proud about.In this way our Erasmus+ project has certainly developed the necessary tools for ""average"" high school students who sometimes lack motivation and for innovative teachers longing to find stimulating ways to help their students achieve more. The open educational resources produced will remain part of ongoing teaching practice, so that we are sure that this project will be just the beginning of many more successes!"

"The ""Creating and developing your future"" project has allowed the 4 partner schools to implement a groundbreaking programme of skills-based entrepreneurship, rather than just focusing on academic subjects. The basis of the project has been not only to focus on the theoretical contents of typical entrepreneurial activities but also to provide our students with an innovative practical approach, by learning from experts in professional careers and the labor market, and allowing them to test the skills acquired in a real environment throughout the project, thereby building their skill set and confidence levels. School is all about preparing young people for the future and yet orientation is done most often by ""ordinary"" teachers and many have received no job orientation training and simply “muddle though”. Few have any significant experience of work outside of teaching. Most have never been through a job selection process like that faced by most young people today and they rarely face the pressures of job insecurity. Our pioneering project has been an attempt to bridge the “orientation gap”. Throughout the project, partner schools have rethought that policy of academic and professional guidance, including students and parents in the redesign of that orientation plan. An online orientation tool has been produced and it is available to the local community allowing students to acquire more than skills: to be responsible for their own future.In the project we have implemented new teaching methodologies, based on mentoring, such as project-based learning, problem solving, generation of SCOs, inverted classes, gamification, design thinking, and business creation through agile methodologies and Lean Startup. All this applied to entrepreneurship, using Canvas models and business plans that have been implemented with simulations.Our students have to acquire, in addition to professional knowledge, new skills and work experience, and also have personal development plans to face the difficulties and challenges of adult life with maturity, creativity and the resilience necessary to solve them effectively. We firmly believe that this project has helped them to do so, both to direct participants and to those who have indirectly been involved. In addition, the products generated will help the rest of the educational community to benefit from the conclusions of the project.Besides, this project has helped teachers to abandon their comfort zone focusing them on the real world outside school, thanks to partnerships with all types of stakeholders, such as alumni, local, regional and international companies, chambers of commerce and elected representatives.Not only have they had on-the-job training, but teachers have broadened their horizons as to the opportunities and threats outside education. What's more, the senior leadership in schools have broken the mould of the traditional pyramidal power paradigm and allowed their staff to take on responsibility and own the school development plan that they are pushing. And thanks to an online orientation tool and a resource platform, many opportunities for other teachers in Europe open up for them to add to this ongoing project."

The idea of our project came from the necessity of offering our students curricular activities complemented by extracurricular activities, with a special emphasis on developing their various skills, on also giving chances to 'underprivileged' students and diminishing exclusion, drop-out rates and school fastigue and on giving them the chance to discover and unfold their diverse intercultural skills. Students of each school set up clubs (ISC = International Student Club) at their school. These were included in a “Europe Center” at school, which coordinates resources, meetings and topics. This center started to reach other European schools, creating a European network and international clubs, working on the same project / topic. These concentrated on topics relevant for Europe and the future. The following clubs were created dependend on the interests of students and teachers in each school: 1.Media /Journalism Club 2.International Job Market Club 3.Company start-up Club 4.Debating Club 5.Travel Club 6.Eco Club Considering the variety of issues that were addressed in the clubs and the flexibility of our project, we achieved that many students and teachers found the topics attractive and joinend the clubs. Moreover, each center was able to develop in time, as a result of dissemination activities, the possible impact on the centers by the products of the project and the creation of new ideas, both during the project period and beyond.The clubs encouraged students to gain knowledge and to understand , compare and evaluate different attitudes and habits of the countries, to grow awareness and to develop social, economic, professional and linguistic skills and entrepreneurial thinking and acting. They worked together via different communication tools like the project homepage, in the internet forum of the project, video conferences, eTwinning etc. The results of the club projects were finished at international partnership meetings. Learning/teaching/training activities, were presented, evaluated (analysis SWOT with questionnaires) and published ( e.c. www.sifec.eu). The activities created a broadening of options in job orientation, more flexibility on the job market and the students' private life. Our project has the chance to be permanently disseminated because, after the end of the project, the Europe Centers remains an important component of each school and is able to develop other types of European cooperation. The results of the individual clubs were documented as project results and were published as an inspiration for similar projects for other schools. The project also emphasized how schools could install certain clubs in the lessons of various subjects. The structure of international cooperation that was built up and tried out in the project was documented extensively and was offered to the schools in Europe as a readily usable structure.

According to the WHO and the UN, sustainable development should not just be included in syllabuses but must be a driver for change in behaviour. Yet, if citizens do not engage, all attempts at change and sustainable development are bound to fail. In the EU, burning issues such as climate change, rejection of political credibility that often leads to extremism, conspicuous consumption and obesity cannot be addressed by politicians alone: citizens are needed. Schools are supposed to form citizens, but change cannot be brought about by teachers just telling students what to think and young people asked to be passive. What is vitally needed is a sustainable development plan based on citizen commitment, and schools can have a great impact. Fostering Commitment in Young Europeans (FcyE) is a two-year project bringing together approximately 120 students aged 16-18 from four European high schools, situated in Germany, France, Poland and Spain. In each school, activities will be led by 5 or 6 teacher-mentors, including experienced and new educators, thereby creating a dynamic for incremental change. They will advise and teach students in weekly sessions and via social media, to encourage them to throw themselves nationally and transnationally into real-life issues—diet, mobility, consumption and a sustainable, eco-friendly environment—to commit to and drive forward necessary change. If students want to succeed they will need to work as a cohesive transnational team, which is why we have focussed heavily on improving their communication skills in English, the project language. Indeed, FcyE only has meaning as part of a Europe-wide collaboration as today’s issues can’t be solved by any single nation alone. Hope of solution must include partnership, listening to others and concessions. And thanks to best practice in each country, the transnational groups can use the talents of the many. But rather than concentrating on traditional language or even CLIL lessons, staff aim to teach practical, hands-on things like cooking, growing food, recycling clothes and waste, and looking at what seasonal produce our regions provide. Staff will engage differently with participants to find a balanced diet, fight against the pressure to buy certain products, despite heavy advertising campaigns, and indicate how plastic can be reduced, as well as highlighting the need to factor reduced mobility and transport in general into plans.The first year of the project will focus on the students and their school environment. After carrying out research as part of one of 5 specific workgroups—food, diet, recycling waste, energy and water, and clothes—students will have the chance to organise an awareness week and an evening event to sensitise students and parents to the issues they have been working on. During the second year of the project, the focus will switch to the wider community: the local area, the region and Europe as a whole. As a result, the food and diet workgroups will merge and a new fifth group created: mobility and transport. Participants will find out all that has been happening around them, by contacting, meeting and questioning locally elected representatives, companies and associations relevant to their topic, before coming up with five-year plans to address environmental, societal, health and dietary issues in their schools and local areas. Finally, participants will learn how relevant the European institutions are for their future and at the final event in Brussels, they will bring concrete proposals to the European Commission and Parliament.FcyE aims specifically to give young people a voice, a role and a whole range of competences that will help prepare them for their future studies and lives, motivating them as they realise they are learning real-life skills. Thanks to FcyE’s Individual Project Evaluation Tool (IPET) they will plot their progress in fourteen transversal and key competences for lifelong learning: confidence and maturity, organisational skills, time management, teamwork, taking initiatives, assuming responsibility, carrying out research into major issues, gaining new ICT skills, acquiring presenting and selling skills, developing video skills, honing writing skills, improving their MFL (here English), cross-cultural awareness, and devising, carrying out and interpreting surveys. By equipping them so comprehensively and enabling them to understand their power as consumers and citizens, they will be able to engage in a political dialogue with their fellow citizens. In the long run, a simplistic ‘top-down’ approach doesn’t work either at school or in politics. Our European schools should be focussed on fostering relationships of understanding, trust and commitment, not dispensing dry knowledge: the central outcome of our project will be changed individuals and a better future for our schools, local areas and Europe. This is what sustainable development is all about.