The story of the journey Kouros Nurmohammadi Baigi has taken from the Moria Refugee Camp and the news of his success followed the Schools for All National conference in June.
Kouros attended the Schools For All Conference on 20 June, representing the Model Lyceum of Mytilene. Kouros received the certificate of completion of the course on behalf of his school and shared a few words about his experience at the school and the project:
“Thank you very much. You don’t know what this means to me, living all this and being a refugee in these classes.”
Kouros aced this year’s national exams and will study at the Electrical Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The news of his success got nation-wide media coverage.
“We are proud of the work of the schools in our network and we continue to work for inclusive education so that such achievements become an everyday phenomenon!”, says EWC Schools for All coordinator Dora Katsamori.
64 schools
The National Conference of the Schools For All project took place on Monday, June 20 in Athens.
This is truly an exceptional work to witness. The reward of bringing the children into the schooling system, getting them educated, making sure that they learn the language, learn the rules of society, bringing them basically into the society, is not only integrational efforts for the students themselves. It is for their families and for the local communities and I think Schools For All certainly underlines this in a very apt way.
Norwegian Ambassador in Greece, Frode Overland Andersen
This warm, inspirational and meaningful event was an opportunity to celebrate the work of the 64 schools from the project’s network. During the conference 44 schools exhibited posters, digital materials, and artifacts, showcasing the implementation of their action plans. The walk-through exhibition was accompanied by the musical performance of Connect by music group from the refugee facility in Thermopiles.
The conference marked the 3-year cycle of the project but also introduced its next phase, future steps, and launched a new educational tool: The handbook of ‘Schools For All Integration of Refugee Students in Greek Schools – 31 Basic Activities” was launched at the conference and presented to 1437 participants the next day at the online training “Introduction to methods and supportive techniques for refugee inclusion in school communities” in collaboration with Learn Inn Ekpa.
It is compiling your lived experiences of the last 3 years so that they can be transferred to other teachers, other schools in Greece but also in many other countries of Europe. Little did we know, when we planned this 3 years ago, of the relevance of this material in Europe, today.
Ana Perona-Fjeldstad, Executive Director of the European Wergeland Centre about the new handbook
The award ceremony of the schools was a unique and emotional moment for all the attendees. The school teams received their ‘diplomas’ and shared a few words:
Τhank you very much! School is a second home to me here in Greece. I am here, I am happy and I hope I can continue going to school.
A student of the Εvening High School of Mytilene
The video of the conference is available with English translation here .