"Tudo vale a pena se a alma não é pequena."

Fernando Pessoa, a famous Portuguese poet once said that everything is worth it if your soul or your spirit isn't small. The sentence loses a lot in translation as we do not master the use of words as skillfully as the poet, but the quote does apply to this project, our efforts to carry on with it and the outcome.

As it can be seen through the students' stetements, the students' and the teachers' evaluation forms and all the other comments on the subpage we do believe it was a demanding and at times difficult project but it was also a very rewarding experience.

The students participated massively in most activities. Only the last activities that took place only in May and June have less participants either because students did not feel confident or were too shy to participate in online debates or because we were unable to reach some of them.

Among students' favourite activities are "Let's get to know each other", "Presenting one's speech" and "You've got the poer - live debates" showing that when given a voice, students enjoy expressing themselves and communicating with others. However, activities such as "It got to me - quotes posters", "The power of words" the creation of mind maps or infographics rank high as well. Several students go as far as saying they enjoyed them all.

A very high percentage of students felt that the project has enabled them to use English in real and different contexts, to develop their critical thinking and other cross-curricular skills, to use digital tools more effectively and to develop their listening, writing and speaking skills as it helped them learn and use new vocabulary and structures.. More than 90% referred that the project allowed them to develop their their creativity, while working collaboratively and learning in a fun and motivating way. A vast majority also referred that the project helped them develop team work and leadership skills.

When asked "What was the most positive thing about participating in this project?" we could find many interesting answers that could be summed up in these three statements:

"Developing skills for my future, not only my english fluency but also the fact of working in groups with different people from differents parts of the world while learning to argument about diffent topics that are important to become a better citizen and be more professional."

"For me the most positive thing about participating in this project was that I met new people and talked with them, because that's what challenged me to improve my English skills and become a better speaker."

"This project made us think about many essential things in our everyday life, and made us more conscious about our actions."

A couple of students mentioned difficulties working on the project because their level of English was not very good, but the majority was able to participate in all the activities without problems

Several suggestions were made regarding topics for next projects but aome would like to go on with the topics we have dealt with this year and, above all, they would like to continue the online debates.

We believe one has to be proud about everybody's work!