The English Language Department encourages students to participate in many regional, national and international events and competitions. Developing cultural competence, raising cultural awareness and building up tolerance and understanding of other cultures has always been a priority in foreign language teaching at this school. We believe that language cannot be detached from culture and that consequently, cultural learning should be an integral part of any language learning programme. The last Comenius project from 2011 to 2013  on "European Communication in Active Lifelong Learning" came  logically and naturally as part of our understanding of the school needs and priorities. This new project "Young Europeans Propose Solutions", on differences and similarities in problems young people face today and how they can be tackled, is also a natural extension of our consistent work in this area. As our school has recently started changing its high profile, facing problems typical of society as a whole, we want to be responsive to the students' needs and voice concerns over topical issues in EU countries and beyond.

This involvement in the project is based on the priorities of the school and is part of the new school plan for European development.

Our project partners from Izmit, Turkey,and Lappeenranta, Finland, are schools with which we worked efficiently together on Comenius, "European Communication in Lifelong Learning" (2011-2013).  They have been well-cooperating partners , too, together with our new partners from Germany and Lithuania, in different projects for the last 12 years. For example, German and Finnish school worked on three successful international projects in Comenius.  We contacted the Lithuanians through the  Slovak partner  from the previous project and we are happy to have in our future partnership a newcomer from Turkey(\(\(\(Sivas), who was introduced and recommended by our well-known and reliable former Slovak and current Finn partners. 

In the process of establishing the team, all partners proved to be completely reliable. We are a team of English Language and CLIL teachers who have former experience in international projects. We have been trying to ensure safe, positive and supportive educational environment, giving opportunities to students to grow competitive. We believe that the diversification of approaches and sharing innovative and good practices stimulates the individual development of students. The focus of our work is on the acquisition of skills through more efficient cooperation among European partners.

The expected effect for us is by tapping into each other's expertise, to acquire higher professional skills, higher cultural competence, better understanding of how educational systems function, more efficient cooperation in strategic partnerships, better European perspective and higher international profile.