erasmusplusmap

Monday 30^th November 2015

Monday was the first day of the project: everybody arrived to the school with their guests at 8 o’clock, and after a very short speech of welcome by the headmistress in the auditorium, we had a tour of the school to show the Teams the rooms in which we would work during the following week.

After coming back to the auditorium we were introduced to the project by the teachers. Then, all the students and teachers went to the gym of the school to know each other better. We had to ask some questions to people we didn’t know and write the answer on a sheet. The questions were about hobbies, favourite historical characters, tv series, actors and also secrets that nobody knew. Then, after having interviewed about 10 students, we came back to the auditorium to discuss something we found similar to us or very strange about someone.

At 10:30 we did a Role Play with the Association “Siriani in transito”: we had to recreate the whole journey of the migrants from their house to Europe with very little money and only three belongings. We had to believe to be a man, a woman, a young boy or a family with babies, put ourselves into their shoes and then try to discover a way to reach the dreamed country, with legal or illegal means, with all the difficulties it involved and with all the good or bad things that could happen. One of us was the time keeper, who counted all the days that we spent, and a money keeper, who said how much money we still had and so what we could do. I think we found it very interesting understanding how hard is that journey and how long it could be.

At 2 o’clock p.m. we had lunch together at the cafeteria and in the afternoon the French teacher, Mr. Ledru, gave a lesson about the main elements of “migration”. In the second part some students from each country explained the situation of their own country referring to recent local newspaper articles.

When each country had finished its presentation, hosts and guests came back home at almost 5:30 p.m.

Tuesday 1st December 2015

On Tuesday the day started at around 8.00/8.10 a.m., after we all arrived at school and we all went to the auditorium like every day. The first step of the day was the meeting with the mayor of Rho, Mr Pietro Romano, introduced by our headmistress at around 8:30 a.m.. He has kindly accepted to visit our school to greet and to demonstrate his interest in the project, considering it very important because of its current and meaningful topic, and expressing his interest in getting informed about the results of the work. There was also the alderman of youth policy, Andrea Orlandi, who made a little speech about the importance of Erasmus + too.

Around 9:00 a.m. the teachers divided us into four groups made by students from all the countries to make the “Workshop 2”: every group had to produce a collage with pictures about everything that related to immigration. These pictures had been searched by each student in the weeks before the Italian meeting. We had to use large boards on which we put the pictures after thinking about how to present esthetically the final result; other than pictures, we could insert words or graphics or whatever we wanted to clarify certain concepts (for example, the steps of immigration).

Around 10:50 a.m. we had a break and ten minutes later we restarted our works. The production of these collages took all morning. The realization of these collages made it possible for us to understand the conditions that migrants are forced to endure and also the reasons why they have to leave their original countries. Working with photos has really helped us to better understand this topic: we have been able to focus in our minds images which could be the starting point of reflections. The works would be shown on Friday morning by some students from each of the four groups.

 At 13:00 a.m. we had lunch at school: there were pasta and pizza, but also some fruits and sweets.

One hour later we left the school and we went to Milan by bus to visit the town centre for the first time with the guests. In Milan we saw the theatre "La Scala” from outside, we walked along the famous Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery, where many people enjoyed trampling the bull.

 Wednesday 2^nd December 2015

In the morning at school we were all divided in 3 groups with different tasks.

A smaller group, composed by 6 people, worked for the creation of the logo for the project, a bigger group worked on the questionnaire which would have been presented during the Hamburg meeting in January and the last group worked on a glossary which would be used as a reference all along the project.

The guys in the logo group spent the first hour discussing what should a logo be like and they ended up deciding that it had to be simple and neat and yet symbolic. During the second hour they sketched some ideas and in the third hour they refined their personal idea of the Erasmus logo which they presented on Friday.

The questionnaire group started by writing whatever question came to their mind to ask a migrant, then they started to eliminate all the superficial and useless questions, ending up with 25 questions that would be asked by the participants of the project to as many migrants as possible and whose answers would be inserted on the website "Survey Monkey".

The glossary team at first made a list of words concerning migration, such as refugee, migrant, Schengen zone, asylum... and then it was subdivided in teams of two people who had to give a definition to two of the words on the list. They had then to check online the official definitions and refine their own.

We ate all together a packed lunch prepared by the school and then we took the bus to go to Milan and see "The Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci; we also visited the Castello Sforzesco and we've had some free time to show our guests the center of the city.

At about 5pm we took the bus and returned home where we had dinner with our families and our guests.

Thursday 3^rd December

On Thursday, 3^rd December, we woke up early because we took the bus from the school to Genova. In the program of MAP Project, there was an entire day dedicated to this city, bound to the topic of Migration. The trip on the bus lasted four hours and we arrived at the harbor at 10:30. Once there, we had some free time to visit the city center with the students that we hosted. It was a fast but complete visit of the city, that made clear one of the most important points, the integration of migrants.

After that, we walked to Galata Museum , where we had a guided tour on the theme of our project, in fact they explained to us how the Italians migrated at the beginning of the XXth century, just as it is happening in our days.

This visit was interesting, because it clarified many questions that we ask ourselves very often. We finished our visit at lunchtime and we had some more free time.

Friday 4th December 2015 

Friday 4th December, the last day we spent together, was a special one. In the morning we had a plenary session of the week in the school auditorium. All the results of the workshops which had taken place during the week, were presented. Firstly, two or three members of each of the four collage groups (run on Tuesday) described their own poster. Then everybody could observe each collage for a while.

Then, each workshop group presented their works, explaining how they worked and showing their results: the glossary group showed the words they had found about migration and they organized a game; the questionnaire one made some examples of the questions they had prepared; the logo one presented the logos they had created. Then everyone voted his favourite, in order to choose the logo of the project. Everyone applauded the winner, which is now our MAP logo.

Afterwards we had a break with the whole school in the gym. This was a good moment, due to its meaning. The students shared Italian cookery and its main product: bread. The break lasted about 30 minutes and it was a little bit messy because of the great number of students.

Later we had to choose the best quote of the week. In the end, we had four sentences and we voted for the best one, which turned out to be “Equality means integration. Integration means humanity. Humanity has no borders.”, which was actually MAP’s quote of the week.

After a few minutes of break, we and teachers went to the Townhall of Rho to have a meeting with Andrea Orlandi, the council treasurer, and Luigi Negrini, the council person in charge of welfare. Some of us asked how the problem of migration was dealt with in Rho and so on. Mister Negrini answered that an important Catholic association, “Caritas”, had the duty to take care of migrants and in general the poor. We expressed our own opinion. The council representatives gave the teachers seven different tiles in which one student per country wrote the school name which he came from and in the biggest one the quote of the week. It is important to say that all the tiles will be set in the Constellation Square, near EXPO site. A photo was taken in the main hall and the students went out in the end.

Differently from the other days, on Friday afternoon we could have free time to go shopping or whatever we would love to do. A great part of us went shopping.

In the evening a farewell party took place in the hall of Majorana High School. There was an ethnic menu with dishes from all over the world: vegetarian couscous from Morocco, chickpeas hummus from Africa, potatoes from Peru and Norma Pasta from Sicily. We enjoyed very much the nice party, also because of the rock band composed by some Majorana students. They played not only modern songs but also records from the 1970s and 1980s. It was nice to see that a school suddenly became a dance floor where also the teachers expressed themselves with nice movements. It could have been going on and on until dawn. Despite the happy moments, a lot of us started crying. Everybody wanted to stay there just for a little bit longer. But we had to go home at 11 o’clock.

 

Contributions by Zaira, Cristina, Alessandro, Mimmo, Viola, Nayla

The project inspired the Italian students to write a song entitled 'What we could be' that you can listen to below : 

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