Flavia and Martina: our experience with Erasmus+

Erasmus is a student mobility program of the European Union, aiming to bring together young people and different cultures. We started a project that we did not think could be transformed into such a great experience that marked the end of our journey in the middle school. It was difficult because it lasted two years, but we could make new friends with both Italian students from other classes and foreign students from the partner countries. We had some occasions to work online, to meet them through their work but I would like to talk a bit of out experience in Gela, for the closing project meeting. In this occasion, we welcomed French and Romanian students. We met them the first day in the science lab, we did some ice-breaking activities and played games to get to know each other. Then, we were taken to the Main Hall to attend a conference on the theme of migrations: “Us and the others: welcome, understand and tell”.

The featured speakers at the conference were: Nicolae Chilcos, Oldest Member at the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate in Sicily, who talked about the integration of Romanian community in Sicily which is the biggest group of immigrants in our area; Emanuele Cidonelli, Chief of Communication Department, Advocacy and Fundrising, United Nations Ocha in Niger. He explained clearly the political situation in Niger and the reasons that lead people to escape. Then, we met Stefano Hallam, Cultural Mediator for political refugees. He told about his own experience like political refugees escaped from Egypt during Mubarak dictatorial regime and how was his integration in Italy.

Students showed great interest, attention and involvement about the conference.

On the second day, some students enjoyed a trip to Catania: I didn’t go, but they told us that they especially enjoyed the meeting with the Consul of Romania.

On the third day, in the morning, from 08.00 to 09.00, French and Romanian students attended again the first class at school together with their hosting friends. They took part in the lessons and did some CLIL activities.

After that all the students were gathered in the Main Hall and were involved in 3 Kahoot! games using their phones.

In the first round, we had questions about the project, the Italian students got the second place, the second round was reserved for the foreign students to test their knowledge about Sicily and the third test was about Europe. After, we went to the gym and we played volleyball and we had a lot of fun!