Erasmus+ IVTA Madeira

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INTERCULTURAL VOLUNTEER TEENAGERS’AWARENESS

The school is located in a small island of Madeira, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.The most important treasures of the island are its Nature,“Laurissilva” forest and “Levadas” considered by UNESCO as Humanity’s Natural Heritage.Our school was started in 1982 as a low level school and it “grew” gradually and, in1994, classes began in Secondary School, giving, in this way, a significant step towards the strengthening of its identity.As public institution of education, it has a fundamental role in the fight against illiteracy and school abandonment. Therefore, it becomes more and more proactive, with the capacity to value itself and to value the environment in which it is situated, making it more appealing and prosperous. Examples are the commitment to the creation/implementation of Vocation and educational Training, Professional Courses and Lifelong Learning Courses in order to enable inclusion, taking into account school and social exclusion.Due to economic dependence on services and essentially subsistence agriculture, there is a great tendency towards desertification, which is mainly a consequence of large emigration flows among the younger population. Because of that, the school has an important work to prepare young people to know how preserve this richness.There are activities in the curriculum but the most important is to create the new future generations with the motivation to know how to preserve this important richness. Volunteering in our point of view and from our experience is the best way to learn more about it and we aim to promote intergenerational and intercultural volunteering.We have volunteering activities in our school but we are open for new approaches and eager to share ours in order to create and foster a spirit of help and understanding among the peoples of the world.We are going to involve into the project all the school,103 teachers/504 students under the coordination of its pedagogical structures.Key persons of the project: António Bernardino de Ornelas, Maths and Science teacher with post-graduation in Investigation and Innovation in education.He has more than 20 years of experience in international partnerships.Maria João Pinheiro, Economy teacher is specialist in working with quality assurance in theVET. During some years she coordinated extracurricular projects for students reported with theParliament. Mário Rogério Rodrigues, Maths teacher, he participated previously inComenius projects and has long experience working with ICT. In case of staff changes any of key persons can be replaced by project team members. Due to the geographic isolation we always feel the need to acquire more “tools” from other institutions in order to motivate the students to the knowledge, to increase their interest in the school and to avoid its abandonment. We become better and better in our mission!Teachers and students are eager to take part inEU projects, they want to be more involved in Europe, sharing experiences and to gain new ones.