ESC: Solidarity Corps volunteers at Højboskolen

Højboskolen is a public school for primary and lower secondary education and has 550 pupils from 5 to 16 years of age – from pre-school to the 9th degree. The school has two-tree classes in every year group and an after school care for our pupils in the grades 0.-3. Højboskolen is situated in Hørning, a small town with approximately 7300 inhabitants located in the outskirts of Aarhus, the second largest town in Denmark. Højboskolen is an open-plan school and is based on the core values community, professionalism, innovation and creativity at all levels. The 550 pupils are mostly inhabitants in Hørning and come from several different social groups. Approximately 15% of the pupils are bilingual with different cultural backgrounds and many of the pupils have moved to Denmark recently and started at Højboskolen. Højboskolen is known for encouraging the pupils to be openminded and tolerant citizens and the effort has been successful: Our pupils seem to include each other across classes and cultural differences. This also means that no pupils are excluded from the community. The school prioritize quality in the education: Everyone from the pupils to the teachers are given the opportunity to develop professionally as well as academically in a challenging learning environment. We greatly emphasize language skills as well as the importance of cultural understanding from an early age, and our pupils are taught the English language from the 1st grade and the German language from the 5th grade. We encourage all our pupils to travel, study or work in other European countries after finishing school. Højboskolen prioritize internationalization, and the European Solidarity Corps project represents one of several activities. Other activities are e.g. international work, such as summer camps and in school topics at different levels of a Cambridge College degree are taught. The School is in a process of being renovated and also new outdoor Domes are being build, and in this process we will add even more focus on sustainable learning and green living. Our main target groups are the volunteers and the pupils. Other target groups are the staff and the pupils' parents, and also inhabitants of Skanderborg municipality. The main activities are for the volunteers to participate in different classes as well as different topics in school, e.g. language classes and creative classes, i.e. art-, cooking- and craft classes, where they can contribute with their own initiated activities and help groups of students. Our volunteers also participate in the After School club, where they, in a more informal environment, have the opportunity of planning, initiating and evaluating different activities. Apart from this the volunteers will plan and implement learning projects for the pupils within the topics of sustainability and solidarity, and they will contribute with practical help in the school canteen and participate in school events, trips and camps. We would like to contribute to a better understanding of multicultural values, equal rights as well as emphasizing diversity and global respect and increasing values such as humanity and compassion across cultural borders. Our aims are defined thus: - We want our volunteers and pupils to develop and increase their tolerance and acceptance of others coming from different backgrounds. - We want our volunteers to develop their skills and competences within teaching and the pedagogical area and learn the Danish way of teaching and studying as well as the school system. - It is our objective that our volunteers and pupils increase the multicultural communication between people and achieve better language skills through the meeting between people from different backgrounds, and thus get new insights in other cultures and languages in order to learn more about our culture and themselves. - It is our objective that our volunteers will get a good grip on the Danish awareness of and focus on sustainability by e.g. recycling, sorting of garbage, ecological food production as well as sustainable transport e.g. bike riding. - We want our volunteers to be knowledgeable about the equality of sexes and to experience that everybody counts and is important in a working environment. - We want our volunteers to be able to increase their initiative, entrepreneurship and personal drive by developing and working with own ideas and projects. - It is our objective that our volunteers will contribute to development of communication on the school's social media platforms as well as contributing to shooting short films and taking pictures for newsletters and developing online presentations.