#ErasmusDay 2020
Our motto was: ‘Solidary in the fight against stereotypes’.
The main aim of the workshops, organised in our school, was to shape the attitude of openness and tolerance.
On Thursday, 15th October 2020, we met to debate on the important issue of human rights. We got familiar with the most important document regulating this matter, namely the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Afterwards, we took part in workshops ‘Let’s draw human rights’. During the workshops, in groups of several people, we worked on selected human rights and we were supposed to present the given human right in a nonverbal way, through drawings. The remaining groups were to guess the human right presented in the drawing. Students’ involvement was exceptional and they came up with myriads of ideas. Then we watched two short films, produced by Amnesty International, about human rights violations. The main aim of both films was to make us aware of the fact how many human rights are unceremoniously violated in today’s world.
On Friday, 16th October 2020, we participated in other workshops. This time they were devoted to the European system of human rights protection – the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The aim of the meeting was to get familiar with the way the Council of Europe and the Court of Human Rights function but primarily to make students aware of their rights and teach them how to assert their rights. An important aspect of this meeting was drawing students’ attention to the fact that regardless of skin colour, sex, background (whether you are a respected citizen from upper crust or a prisoner) we all deserve for our rights to be respected and effectively protected. During these workshops, students had a chance to become a judge of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and consider the case of a prisoner, who sued the country for violating his right to freedom of religion. We had a very long discussion and the opinions varied. The participants tried to constitute the foundation of human rights protection system in an imaginary country, not knowing what their social status would be. We came up with a big catalogue of human rights. These workshops were prepared by Aleksandra Cieślar and Magdalena Żerdik.
Additionally, as part of #ErasmusDays, our students along with the students from our partner schools from Italy and Spain took part in an online trivia contest about European Union and about countries involved in the project. The contest was prepared by the school form Spain. Project participants could also take part in an online meeting involving art and music. It was prepared by Italian students from our partner school in order to celebrate #ErasmusDays. These workshops helped to shape the attitude of tolerance, the ability to cooperate and critical thinking. They created good conditions for development of important social features, such as empathy and openness towards other human beings. They enabled us to get familiar with important documents concerning human rights and they made us realise the importance of respecting them regardless of background, sex, beliefs, social status, skin colour, etc. These workshops made it possible to create a catalogue of rights important to a young person starting their life. During #ErasmusDays we could disseminate the aims, activities and results of our project by the means of different media and also popularize the Erasmus+ projects.
The conducted #ErasmusDays workshops integrate well with the school normal activity as they highlighted the attitudes and activities important to our school community. The aim of the school is to make students aware of human rights and to teach them how to respect them. We want our students to build a team who knows how to cooperate and who can oppose violations of the rights of individuals and groups. We want them to understand that in order to function well in a society, basic human rights need to be respected regardless of being an ordinary citizen or a decision-maker.
