Our project “Power of Friendship: anti-bullying program for schools” intends to offer an anti-bullying program through the promotion of six specific values, easy to understand and integrate in school’s culture: respect, empathy, tolerance, kindness, unity in diversity, friendship. This program, grounded on common values, is based on the belief that schools need to change in order to decrease aggression and protect the emotional health of students and teachers on long term. Also, bullying is directly recognized as affecting early school leaving in the Annex to the Council Recommendation on Early School Leaving (2011). The project will involve students, teachers, parents from six primary schools from Romania, Turkey, Greece, Poland, Italy whose aims are to establish a long-term social cohesion and a positive environment and strengthen cooperation.

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This innovative program will improve students’ own personalities, build their self-esteem, develop positive attitudes. Students will learn to recognize and accept different cultures and ways of thinking. By cooperating with partners from all over Europe through agreed core values, the teachers will acquire new competencies. They will learn how to apply for the program at the school level helping all children, including those at risk of leaving school early or with a high risk of exclusion. Our project aims to highlight the core values of respect, tolerance, kindness, empathy, unity in diversity and friendship to prevent bullying and develop friendships, to enhance critical thinking, social and cognitive skills. These core values develop the children’s social skills and enable them to develop positive relationships in childhood as well as later in life. The objectives are achieved to strengthen the European dimension by providing intercultural dialogue through many activities promoting awareness of the importance of friendship and combating of bullying and violence among young people.

 

The planned social activities such as drama, role-playing, poems, inclusive traditional games, songs, drawing, painting, competitions, Collaborative story writing, ICT, etc will stimulate social and emotional development, enhance students' ability to relate with others and boost feelings of confidence. Socializing will equip the children with problem-solving skills in relational matters and develop positive behaviors so they prevent and minimize bullying by creating a positive environment where students will respect each other. Teaching children social skills through values will be a good starting point to tackling bullying. Our project isn’t about constantly focusing on bullying, but on the things that can minimize bullying – such as promoting positive behavior in schools to create an environment where children behave well, where children take responsibility for each other’s well being and include and support each other. We have also planned six Transnational learning, teaching and training activities meetings for teachers (one in each country) and 3 short meetings for pupils mobility with a small group of students.

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We are sure that the teachers will acquire new competence and they will develop basic and transversal skills that will help them cope with any type of aggression and will learn how to maintain a positive school climate.

The core of the partnership is to exchange good practices, taking advantage of different skills that each partner brings into the project with multinational activities and develop a more integrated curriculum, extend ICT skills, and foster reflective practices. Project staff will be involved in the activities through the website, creating project materials such as an e-story book, calendar 2020, PowerPoint presentation, dictionary, mascot travel book, mural, project 6 Teacher Learning Activities meetings.

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There will be a mascot competition among the partner schools and Each country. Our mascot traveling with a backpack will be exchanged among the partners and will stay in each country during the mobilities to discover other countries’ culture, language, the way of living through working on the agreed core values. Achieving the objectives will be measured through the project website, social media impact, student interviews. Questionnaires for teachers and students will measure the impact of our program. An important outcome of the project will be a collaborative E-story book and designing online activities for teachers.