How do you motivate young students towards history?
Is history a matter limited to national borders?
Or is it crucial to build a united Europe?

We think so!

We are a partnership from five European countries, engaged in a project - WORTHY (WORld wars Toward Heritage for Youth) - whose aim is to develop a common European identity, introducing a European perspective in the schools’ history materials.

We think that trying to get students interested in history is an effective means of building a sense of European citizenship, although it is a very complicated task. So instead of considering history as a series of events that makes humanity human, pupils usually see it as something that happened “long ago and far away”. So, the challenge is on and the WORTHY partnership – after a year of activities - is ready to start a new communication action.  We’re proud to introduce you now to the first issue of a periodic newsletter to effectively promote news, events, programmes and initiatives.

In this issue you will find the project and partnership presentation, the report of the first meetings (held in Vicenza – IT and Pforzheim – DE), news about WORTHY branding identity, the project website, as well as a focus on the guidelines for teachers, which is the first goal we achieved.

We would be glad to know what you think about our project, its developments and results. So, stay tuned with this newsletter but also with the website www.worthy-project.eu.

Your contribution is important to create a sense of European citizenship!

Who’s behind the project?

Seven partners from five different European countries contribute together to school programme modernisation. Ordinary school competencies are combined with skills such as digital abilities, critical thinking, teamwork and cooperation, in order to better learn and understand World War 1 and World War 2 subjects.

The partnership is built upon a multi-stakeholders strategic team project among:
-  the Municipality of Vicenza (Italy), as the lead partner;
- schools:

• the technical secondary school “Guido Piovene” in Vicenza (Italy); 
• the Kepler-Gymnasium in Pforzheim (Germany);

- organisations active in different domains, but equally interested in the promotion of history studies and ICT tools application:

• the NGO ProgettoMondo Mlal from Verona (Italy);
• the Municipality of Niepolomice (Poland);
• the youth association Udruga za rad s mladima Breza in Osjiek (Croatia);
• the e-learning private firm Gryd Ltd (UK).

The complementarity of profiles and expertise allows to maximize the impact of the project and ensure high quality transferable results.

What has happened so far?
 

Kick-off partner meeting in Vicenza (12-14 November 2018)

The project kick-off meeting was held in Vicenza (Italy) from 12th to 14th of November.

After a self-presentation and an introduction about the potential contribution to the project by each partner, the meeting went through a brainstorming to produce some initial ideas on innovative tools related to augmented studying of history and then through a discussion about project contents, objectives and tasks, intellectual outputs, indicators of achievement, the time-frame and partners’ responsibilities in leading or contributing to the intellectual outputs. The project team also discussed the methodological approach with students, the guidelines for teachers and parents, the web platform, the toolkits, the administrative and financial management and the dissemination of results. 

During the meeting, partners had the chance to visit the Museum of Risorgimento and Resistenza and to learn about the role of Vicenza in history from 1798.

The project branding and website development
 

Following the discussion at the partner meeting in Italy, Gryd developed a very attractive logo: the letter W (for WORTHY, World Wars, World Wide Web) rendered in different coloured segments, representing the countries coming together after war.

Gryd also developed the whole brand identity (design layouts for stationary, paragraph styles, pantone colours, footer, main and secondary font family) and thus the website www.worthy-project.eu with basic information for now, to be enriched step-by-step.


The WORTHY Guidelines

The WORTHY Guidelines are the project’s first intellectual output which was achieved.

Coordinated by ProgettoMondo Mlal, with contributions from partners, the document provides methodological guidelines to implement the WORTHY approach.

The Guidelines are primarily addressed to teachers from lower secondary and high schools across Europe, wishing to carry out WORTHY activities. They also offer inputs on how to transfer the approach and successfully implement it in a diverse range of non-formal educational sectors, equally interested in increasing young people's motivation to study history also as citizenship education (e.g. cultural and recreational organisations, youth associations, public libraries and museums).

A draft version has been published in English on our website (http://worthy-project.eu/guidelines). The versions translated in all the partnership languages are scheduled to be published in 2020. They will take into account all the changes and integrations suggested by the teachers.

An e-book version will be released and integrated in the WORTHY Platform, freely available for European teachers and downloadable on any device.


Partner meeting in Pforzheim (15-17 May 2019)

 
The meeting took place in Pforzheim (Germany) in May from 15 to 17. The partners discussed the activities done so far. Schools (Kepler and Piovene) and Niepolomice presented surveys and/or lessons scheduled, Mlal the WORTHY Guidelines (with a specific discussion among partners), Gryd the logo and brand identity and project website, Breza the plan of the project evaluation and Vicenza explained the newsletter plan and other dissemination initiatives connected with the project.

Partners discussed also about copyright, the WORTHY platform (content, categorising, keywords and applications) and next steps.