U-KNIGHT-EUROPE: POLAND

Area: 312 685 km2

Population: 38.7 million

Capital: Warsaw (Warsaw)

President: Lech Kaczyński

Currency: 1 Zloty (PLN) = 100 Groszy

(1 euro = aprox. 3.4 USD)

Tourism: About 14 million tourists a year visit Poland.

Neighbours: Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine,

Belarus, Russia, Lithuania,

Poland is one of the largest countries of Eastern Europe, comparable in terms of area with Italy or Germany. Its population is estimated at about 39 million. In May 2004, Poland joined the European Union.

Welcome to the international Comenius project, "U-KNIGHT-EUROPE"

The „U-Knight-Europe”project is undertaken with the broad objective of promoting European citizenship through the emphasis on historical and cultural heritage. Its main aim could be expressed by the phrase: multi-cultural education and the unification of different cultures.

The underlying idea of this international partnership of 9 countries (Poland, Netherlands, Finland, England, France, Portugal, Cyprus,Italy and Spain) is to work on raising the students' cultural awareness and to develop their understanding of the needs of others in their communities. This will be achieved through the study of knight heroes in the participating nations’ histories. The primary goals are to extend pupils' knowledge of knights from Europe by discovering their style of living, their charter, their values and aims in order to resurrect a “Knight Spirit” in young people. We intend to present an alternative way of living to our pupils and we will encourage them to follow it by becoming a contemporary Knight of Europe with the motto and mission traced from the medieval knights’ code: "Protect the weak, defenceless, helpless and fight for the general welfare of all".

We endeavour to create realistic and hands-on experiences (for example the becoming a knight ceremony, inter-country tournaments, intra- school competitions, music and art festivals and above all - voluntary work). These opportunities will encourage great commitment from the whole school community and will provide worthwhile and exciting experiences for the students, teachers and parents. Throughout the two years this project aims to work against the unfair attitudes of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. The ultimate end-product of the schools cooperation will be the creation of a multilingual website.

Σελίδες

POLAND