The project Community School Museums-COSMUS seeks to value the European cultural heritage, as a central element of diversity and intercultural dialogue; to establish strategic and virtuous interactions, between school, knowledge and education, Community, social, territorial and economic development, and the school Museum, memories, identities, territories, for the reinvention of the world, in the way of learning to know and know how to live together, in a perspective of global citizenship.The main objectives are:To develop strategies of social integration, of intercultural understanding, of a sense of belonging, of valuing people, in the contexts of school, community and city.To promote formal and non-formal learning processes, transversal skills, digital literacy, ICT and multimedia, communication, original and foreign languages, social and civic, capacity of initiative and entrepreneurship, Cultural, aesthetic and artistic environments.To satisfy the needs of training and learning of teachers and pupils, in a meaningful way, at the level of the flexible transversal approach of the curriculum, through collaborative work, as a team, sharing and building knowledge, independently and responsible, in a logic of innovation, creativity and problem solving.The partnership involvers ten institutions (1 Academy, 1 Teacher’s Training Center, 2 Associations and 6 Schools). Six school partners work with a team of 50 students and 10 teachers and 100 families. In addition, it also carefully distributes 36 students with special educational needs and 10 community stakeholders, with an initial universe of 1100 people coming from school and community.The participants are selected, according to criteria and profiles previously defined, by the partners like: gender equality, incentive for the participation of motivated students, with low social formation, handicapped, migrants, in difficulty of early school dropout, failure, and those who face social or religious problems or other type of exclusion. The project will be developed using design methodologies, interdisciplinary, innovative, sustainable development, team-based work, research-action and reflection processes, with flexible approaches to the complexity of themes and problems, through communities of learning and practice, knowledge building, critical sense, and the involvement and participation of the educational community.Reference activities are competitions, content production, intellectual outputs, training and learning, a festival, exhibitions, transnational meetings and a multiplier event.From these activities we expect to obtain several results, tangible and intangible that will last long after the project ending. Some of those tangible results are specific contents (Tales, songs, poetry, Life Reports, Films, Chronicles...) developed within the framework of the dynamics of Community museums of European partners; a toolkit to build a community museum in schools or a collaborative, an e-book with descriptive description of the project and an interactive digital platform. As intangible results we highlight the improvement of teachers and students’ skills on communication, digital, language and creativity skills, debate and critical thinking, cooperation, sustainable development; the awareness of the world and its potential for transformation through an intercultural consciousness; the valuing mobility of people on a planetary scale, in the interaction and inclusion of diverse ethnic-cultural groups, different in their language, religion, customs and traditions; the respect for cultural diversity; contribution to a more humane and meaningful education that respects the diversity of the school and educational community; a processes of change, focusing on the reflection component on the communities that live and interact in the school, in the collaborative resolution of problems and in partnerships with the educational community; Encourage awareness and development of appropriate and contextualised activities in the European dimension.The expected impact is significant at the level of the direct participants involved: teachers, students, community, European project partners, but also on the families, and citizens of the city, whose heritage and cultural contribution is recognized and magnifies the impact of the projectIt is expected to duplicate the universe of direct and indirect participants in the course of the project. The benefits of the project in the short, medium and long term are very significant, by the innovation dimension contained and mobilized by the different connections of the project, the methods, the potential of the networks and partnerships, the objectives and products to be developed.The construction of a Community school museum and related intellectual production are innovative in the educational, social, and cultural sector, inspiring the creation of memories, identities and diversification, in the heart of COSMUS.

The increasing number of students declining in their school performance is an important challenge currently being faced be educational systems in many European countries. Many students leave school with only a minor or even with no exam at all. It's a loss for our society that we are unable to solve these problems and support the students to obtain the best results possible.This development is the result of multiple factors, for instance undetected learning difficulties or submission to inappropriate educational activities, lack of basic skills etc. Apart from this the increasing number of pupils concerned leads us to consider other factors as well, such as self-awareness, socio-cultural background and self-expectations.Quite often we see the students caught between conflicting sets of expectations. They seem to be trapped in in their (personal, social and / or cultural) boundaries and unable to overcome these.The standard school system is not adapted to deal with these problems. This is the starting point for our project.There are several central concerns that we intend to work on, some predominantly focusing on the students, the others focusing on the institutions, i.e. the school. Our main aims are the following.a)Understanding the dynamics that lead to the failure, i.e. the factors that prevent the students from being successfull and fulfil the educational expectations.b)Developing strategies and tools that help the students to recognize and overcome their blocades and to rework the tools during the project after having gained initial experiences.c)Developing strategies and tools for the future, that will help other teachers to become aware of these problems and provide them with adequate means to deal with them. Central topics of the project in all phases will be “groups” and “boundaries”.With regard to a) we will especially explore the the cultural and social setup that a pupil grows up in. The participating student will be made to understand that society consists of numerous groups and that every of these groups defines a a catalogue of behavioral rules to be respected by its members. They are then made to realize to how many groups they belong and that they have to decide by themselves which rules the want to follow.The focus of b) will be to jointly (i.e. pupils, social worker, teachers) develop strategies that will allow the students first to find a way out of the actual situation and second to attain a self-determined life. That is the preliminary prerequisite for acquiring basic skills and prevent school failure.Concerning c) the intention is to draw long-term profit from this project by developing a compendium for the collegues to work with underachieving students. The four partner organisations will work with groups of circa 20 students aged 14-16 years, because this obviously is the age, when the students start to have problems with conflicting rules of conduct set up by schools, friends and parents.The schools represent different parts of Europe that are in close contact to each other. We therefore have a lot of students, growing up between these cultures. Each school will built a team of students that can represent the students being in danger to underachieve their school performance. The teams working in the schools will be greater than the ones, that partake in the mobilities.The project will proceed in four steps:The first step consists in a meeting of the project leaders to come to a common understanding of the concept of society. Additionally the social workers at the German school will explain the teachers their concepts to work with the students to make them recognize their unconscious boundaries and make them decide, which one to shift. This provides the teachers with the basis to develop their own conception, respecting the groupsize and the possibilities at the partner schools. The following mobilities will focus on the students. The second mobility is intended to become familiar with each other and the societies they live in. Taking into account their cultural background and the hopes of the students for their future, the group will begin to design a society and its rules, that allow everyone to develop his abilities without the need of marginalization. They learn which rules help them to fulfill their aims. During the third mobility they will enact their possible personal future including ways to shift obstructive boundaries and false claims. The last step will lead to the understanding of another kind of boundary, by looking at the history of modern state borders and the situation of refugees as victims of these. Our last point will be a discussion of the opportunities they offer to the receiving societies. The results of this project, the presentations of the students and their societies and a catalogue of methods for teachers to work with this kind of students will be compiled in a manual for future use at the respective schools.

"In the globalizing world, people from many different societies come together as part of social life. This union provides diversity and wealth. But it can also cause conflict and compliance problems.The European 2020 Strategy has addressed this problem on the ""inclusive growth"" agenda particularly so the goal of a high employment economy that provides economic, social and borderline integration is to ensure that people exposed to social exclusion are actively involved in society.Economic and political participation in the social structure usually requires a certain level of education. For this reason, each individual who does not participate in the education process leads to significant social and economic problems.Cultural diversity is evident in our schools and individuals who can not reach sense of belonging are at higher levels of risk of early school leaving. These individuals can cause social adjustment problems.The fact that one school from four different countries (Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania) tried to deal with the above-mentioned similar problems led to the development of this joint project idea.Our project, which was produced by determining the reasons for dropout of students and based on the data that these reasons are also related to their demographic variables, aimed to increase the interest of all stakeholders in the school with a holistic approach. And also purposed to contribute to the solution of interventionable aspects in the problem of early school leaving.It was aimed that the activities carried out by reflecting the cultural elements that make up the theme of the project to the school environment have various effects on students, parents, teachers, education administrators and curricula:Students will be able to develop self-esteem and sense of belonging, recognize different cultures and promote their own cultures, experience emotional richness of new learners, improve communication skills and language skills.Parents are expected to take an active role in relation to school, to improve their interest and attitude towards the school, and to move away from the indifference of students to school leaving.Teachers and school administrators will be innovative, multi interactive and student centered rather than traditional teaching methods and classroom management. They will also be more sensitive to early school leaving and will be able to do preventive work instead of crisis intervention.A flexible and inclusive approach can be demonstrated in the development of the curriculum.In order for the planned activities to achieve the stated effects, a close cooperation has been established between the project partners. Each partner has presented rich content with its responsibility. Food, dance, music, games and sports, drama, language training, special occasions, clothing design, rhythm and short film workshops were held within the scope of the activities. In addition to these, we held visiting museums and historical places, organizing seminars and mass meetings were organized.Students, teachers, parents, local people, education administrators and policy makers participated in the project activities, depending on the type of activities and studies to be carried out.While the project was in progress and after it was completed, all possibilities were used to convey the results and experiences to more people. School web pages, social media accounts, media promotions, posters and brochures, project magazine, professional seminars, student and parent seminars, meeting with non-governmental organizations were used as dissemination tools. In addition, eTwinning, School Education Gateway, Erasmus+ Project Result Platform were used in all phases of the project (preparation, implementation, dissemination), and plans were made for the aftermath of the project official period."