Middelfart Gymnasium og HF is a general upper secondary school for students aged 16-20. The students qualify for study at universities and colleges through a 2-year or 3-year programme. We have 650 students (boys and girls) and employ approx. 63 teachers with university degrees. The school is situated in a minor town with approx. 20.000 inhabitants in the middle of the country. The students are recruited from the town and the large rural area belonging to the community. 

The school offers different lines of study programs: Science, Music, Social Science and modern languages (German, French, Spanish). All students have to attend classes in languages (minimum English +1), Natural Science, History and Religion, Art/Music, Social Science and Sports, but they will specialize in one of the 4 study programmes.

We offer a number of extracurricular activities (notably Sport and Music) and elective classes in English and German that prepare the students for the Cambridge and the Goethe language test.

The students are encouraged by the school to get involved in voluntary activities, either with close connection to the school (student council, school party committee, etc) or to organisations in the civil society (political parties, Amnesty International etc). For a number of years now, many students have become engaged in questions connected to the debate on climate change and protection of the environment. The school has a very active committe with a membership of both teachers, students and the technical staff, which has taken many initiatives to highten the awareness among students and staff on the matters of environment and climate change. One notable initiative has been to promote the biological diversity in the areas outside the school. The committee organizes an annual school day for the environment where the new students hear lectures and work in workshops about subjects connected to climate change and environmental protection. This engagement in ecological subjects is in good accordance with the policies of the city council. Middelfart refers to itself as a “climate city” and the city is well known to have been in the forefront of local institutions accepting the challenge of anthropogenic climate impact.

We have relatively few students with a foreign background – approximately 5% - mainly from Sri Lanka, the Middle East and from former Yugoslavia. Our school is a very pacific one having a very few conflicting situations. There are only very few situations of physical disabilities and special needs. This “normal” school environment has the effect that many of our students lack awareness of other more conflicting situations, taking their freedom for granted. However, it is one of the main objects of a upper secondary education to prepare young people to become knowledgeable and legally - as well as morally - competent subjects who will be able to take part in promoting a democratic society in the tradition of the Scandinavian well-fare system.

Denmark has been a democracy for over 150 years, and our pupils tend to take their democratic rights for granted. Through this project we hope to motivate our students to understand the roots and the value of democracy. We hope that European perspectives on issues such as freedom of speech, inclusion and LGBT rights might create a heightened democratic awareness in our pupils and thus encourage them to accept diversity in a non-discriminative environment and engage actively in the protection of human rights.

Middelfart Gymnasium has a partner school in Ghana, and each year students, who participate in our global study programme, travel to Ghana. There, they observe how a developing country addresses issues regarding democracy, human rights and education. Participating in international projects opens the minds of our students to different realities and thus heightens their awareness and appreciation of democracy and human rights.

During the refugee crisis of 2015-2016 the school initiated a volunteer program which enabled our students to help newly arrived refugees in the local area. The program consisted in peer-to-peer activities (playing football, making music together, helping out with homework). Also, our students initiated a charity event in which they donated 2.3 tons of clothing and transported it to refugee camps on the island of Funen and Langeland. One of the most successful volunteer projects, though, is Project Dialogic Reading, between our school, the municipality and 10 kindergardens in our area. Every year since 2015, we have taught Dialogic Reading to 25-45 of our students. The method effectively enhances (second) language acquisition. After being trained in using it, our students volunteer in kindergardens and after-school care where they practice dialogic reading with refugee children. The project is a brilliant opportunity for our students to learn various skills. The children become more efficient speakers of the Danish language, and thus better their chances of successful integration into the community. Moreover, these intercultural encounters broaden the horizon of our students and heighten their sense of empathy towards children with different socio-cultural backgrounds. Lastly, it gives our students the chance to take on active citizenship and ownership, and also the sense of being able to make a difference.

We would like to share these volunteering experiences with the strategic partner schools of the DemEUcracy project and plan teach the participants (students and teachers) the method of dialogic reading in workshops. They will practice their acquired knowledge and skills in our associated partner school Båring Børneunivers.

For the past ten years, teachers and students from our Gymnasium have been working with Middelfart Museum producing exhibitions and educational material focusing on thedevelopment in the perception, treatment and living conditions of people with mental health disorders in the past 150 years. In this period the town of Middelfart has accommodated one of the largest mental hospitals in Denmark. The local museum has taken it upon itself to convey the history of this institution. The museum focuses on the living conditions of the mental patients, the most vulnerable group of citizens in modern Danish history, whose rights and degree of protection from the authorities have been markedly different from their “sane” fellow citizens. Working with the treatment of mental patients in modern Danish history forces our students to consider when, how and why it is permissible to set aside the rights of an individual, who, if given the freedom bestowed upon the rest of us, may constitute a danger to him- or herself or to society. And they can learn how Danish doctors and politicians - in a time and a place quite close to themselves - have sometimes made decisions and wielded power over mental patients in a way they find difficult to understand. Our cooperation with the hospital and the museum gives our students a glimpse into one of the few areas of Danish society where people lead very different lives and face very different problems from those of the average citizen in the welfare state. We would like to enable this glimpse not only to our students but to all participants in the DemEUcracy project.

The school board of Middelfart Gymnasium and HF is very supportive and encourages all kinds of projects that might have a positive impact on the institution and its students. We areconvinced that DemEUcracy for ALL will have a great impact on all participants, students and teachers, on the schools and communities of all the countries in the project.