Joint project of “Juventas” and the City of Skopje

The high-school students initiate changes in their schools

The civil society association for promoting the health and the rights of the children in the education, “Juventas”, in cooperation with the City of Skopje has been implementing the programme for extra – curricular activities called “Developing a proactive relationship of the high-school students towards the city changes” in ten high schools in Skopje for six  months now.

The “Juventas” expert team provided conditions for an authentic inclusion of the high school pupils in solving problems of their interest by including them equally in selecting and decision – making processes, thus causing the changes. More than 250 students, organized in school teams and ten teachers and directors have worked on projects for solving concrete problems and dilemmas. The project subjects have been selected by the students themselves. The high school students from “Boro Petrusevski” worked on “The young People and the Drugs”; the “Korcagin” team worked on “(Ab)using drugs”, the young people from “Marie Curie Sklodovska” reflected on sports games for development, the students from “Pance Karagjozov” on “Healthy spine”, whereas the students from “Gjorgji Dimitrov” dealt with the problem of “AIDS-Education for the young people by young people”. The students from “Zef Ljush Marku” treated the subject of homosexuality, and the students from “Josip Broz Tito” the subject of “having a relationship with a partner from different nationality”. The students from “Zdravko Cvetkovski” organized a bar at their school. The ecologists from “Mihajlo Pupin” discussed the hygiene in their school, and those from “Dimitar Vlahov” reflected on the subject of “Cleaner school”.

Within the project, some of the students found themselves for the first time in the role of researchers and carried out a number of surveys, interviews, took a lot of photographs and did some research on the Internet. The most important accomplishments of the school projects were the actions and the changes that took place at the schools regarding the improvement of the school conditions being treated in the projects. This year, “Juventas” and the City of Skopje are going to continue the realization of such extra-curricular activities at 11 high schools on the territory of the city. The programme that has been carried out in the last five months will be rounded up with a big media promotion of the project results that will take place at the City of Skopje premices on 2 March.

 

S.N.