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M.6. BILATERAL MEETINGS

  • M.6. BILATERAL MEETINGS

    While developing our project KA2: Women As Spiritus Movens Towards Equality in the European Citizenship (Project No: 2014-1-ES01-KA201-003351), we have come acrros a major problem.

    According to the schedule submitted with the application form, the Fifth International Meeting of our project for both teachers and students should take place in Istanbul in February 2016.

    However, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as several organizations based in all the involved countries (France, Finland, Italy and Poland) strongly advise against travelling to Istanbul, where our school partner from Turkey is located. At that moment:

    " Extreme caution is recommended when traveling to Turkey and certain áreas should be avoided:

     - Istanbul: citizens travelling to Istanbul need to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropiate steps to increase their security awareness, mainly in tourist destinations (including Taksim, Osmanbey, Haciosman, Yenikapi), and public transportation systems, specially the underground”.

     Given this situation, and the refusal of our students´ parents to allow their children to participate in a meeting in Istanbul, the Fifth International Meeting of our project, planned to take place in February 2016, was cancelled, by expressed agreement from all partners during the Fourth Transnational Meeting held in Czestochowa (Poland) from 2nd to 8th November 2015.

    During that meeting, it was unanimously decided to bring forward the Sixth and final International Meeting in Italy in April 2016.

    Moreover, we had thoroughly discussed and analyzed all the possible alternatives to ensure that the activities previously planned for Turkey could be carried out in other partner countries and to keep us from having to renounce to that international meeting, the planned activities to do there and the money received for that mobility.

    The result of long hours of debate and discussion were as follows: it was IMPOSSIBLE to organize before April various bilateral meetings that fit with right bands of distance for each of the five schools involved. It was also IMPOSSIBLE to organize them during the months of May and June, for obvious reasons: the end of the school year, exams, different holiday periods, etc.

    The only possible solution was to organize those bilateral meetings at the beginning of the following school year 2016/2017. This solution was unanimously agreed by all partners.

    The Project Coordinator School, on behalf of each and every partner school in our strategic partnership requested the extention of our project lifespan in our agreement. We asked to our National Agencies to bear in mind that this major force problem was beyond our control and cannot be attributable to any of the partner institutions. However, we had devoted much time and effort in finding the only possible solution.

    Taking into account that the project is proving to be a resounding success at all levels, all National Agencies agreed on the extention of the lifespan of our project, giving us till 30th Novembre 2016 to finish all project activities and bilateral meetings. That way we did not have to renounce definitively to comply in full with the objectives, results and approved funding for mobilities. 

    The bilateral meetings were organized taking into account the right bands of distance for each of the five schools involved:

    France – Finland (5th – 11th September)

    Spain – Poland (24th – 30th September)

    Italy – France (10th – 16th October)

    Poland – Spain (17th – 23rd October)

    Finland – Italy (24th – 30th October)

    In all the five bilateral meetings, the following activities were organized to comply with the agrements:

    A.10. THE BIGGEST, THE GREATEST, THE MOST UNSUNG:

    • Watching the videos from all the countries about the biography of the national chosen woman musician.
    • Live performance of the chosen masterpiece from the musician woman, by the host students with the help of school band, orchestra, others…
    • Reading the article and watching the film sent by Turkey about an academician.

    A.11. WOMAN IN BUSINESS WORLD:

    • Watching all the videos from all the countries about the presentation of the product/services.
    • With the help of the evaluation criteria, teachers and students wrote a comment about every product in a Word document to give a feedback.
    • A jury formed by 10 students (5 host and 5 visitors) and 2 teachers (1 host and 1 visitor) nominated each of the 6 product/services presented in one of these categories:

    a) best presentation, b) best product/service, c)  most original idea, d)  most real budget (based on reality), e) Best analyses, f) best dissemination of the product (logo, slogan,)

    • Together with the visitor students, national students conducted an interview with the chosen bussines woman according to questions agreed and recorded it in a video.
    • After the interview, national team and visitor students answered the following question: “What was the most impressive point(s) you learnt from the interview?” .The replies from both, national and visitor students were added into the video.

    A.14. YOUNG WRITERS ON THE ROAD: LOOKING FOR THE HAPPINESS FORMULA

    • Reading the sixth and last chapter written by Turkish team.
    • Reading aloud the 6 chapters of the novel.