Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 110

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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We completed various online tasks which can be
followed on our TwinSpace site:
https://twinspace.etwinning.net/44282/home.
Our preliminary research revealed that community
service has become an integral part of Hungarian
education. Students can choose from dozens of
activities to complete as a requirement to receive
their school leaving (Matura) certificates. The Polish
school actively takes part in volunteering activities.
They run a school volunteering club whose
members take part in various charity events
supporting local organizations, helping elderly
people and students from their school.
The German school concentrates on enabling their
pupils to take responsibility for themselves and
show an appreciation for others, which is reflected
by the aims of their obligatory subjects as well as
their extra-curricular activities focusing on social
skills supervised by the teachers.
The Czech and Romanian schools do not have
community service or volunteering included in their
curricula, but their students take part in various
fundraising activities and are volunteers in different
NGOs. One of our objectives was to explore the
opportunities and compare good practices in the
partner countries.
During our learning – teaching – training activities,
our students had the opportunity to join their
European colleagues in their voluntary clubs or
community service actions. In Hebel-Gymnasium
from Schwetzingen, Germany, we met children with
different national backgrounds (mostly refugee
children who do not speak German), attending a
preparation class, trained by a special teacher who
tries to enable them to attend regular classes.
Our meeting in the Polish school focused on
mentally ill and Down Syndrome people. We visited
a Daily Adaptation Centre and the local centre for
mentally ill people and we took part in typical
therapeutical workshops like cooking and crafting
activities together with them. The most important
fact that we learnt was that music, rhythm and
dance are part of these people’s therapy, so we
sang and danced along them. We rehearsed the
Belgijka dance at the Daily Adaptation Centre in
Pulawy and in Warsaw, during the rehearsal of the
folk group called “The Integrative Ensemble of
Songs and Dance Mazowiacy”, a group consisting of
disabled and mentally ill artists touring all over
Poland and Europe. Belgijka dance became a
leitmotif of our project activities. We practiced it
during each transnational meeting and we
performed it in front of our school colleagues.
We also took part in a campaign to raise money and
collect products for a local food bank.
But the most impressive moments of our week in
Germany were spent in the company of refugee
children and their mothers, members of the
“Women’s café”. This event takes place once a
month and gives the refugee women the chance to
meet, talk to each other and take language classes
while voluntary students organize games and spend
time with their children.
Together we visited the Sea Life museum in Speyer.
It was a great possibility for the students and the
teachers to talk to the refugees and to learn about
their difficulties in Germany and about their reasons
to flee from their home countries.
The topic of our meeting in Romania was physically
ill people. We met the members of the “Marathon
`93” sports club of the Physically Handicapped
People Association from Lugoj and we organized
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