“We not only got to know our partner
countries better, but we also rediscovered
ourselves. And all those who participated
in the project, whether they were teachers,
pupils, parents, or school board members,
have grown personally with this
experience.”
Milena Forštner, teacher from Slovenia
aces
Academy of Central
European Schools
Partners
In 2003, ERSTE Foundation evolved out of
the Erste Oesterreichische Spar-Casse, the
first Austrian savings bank. It holds 25.3% of
the shares of Erste Group. ERSTE Foundation
invests its dividends in social development
projects in Austria and Central and SouthEastern Europe. It supports social participation
and civil-society engagement; it aims to bring
people together and disseminate knowledge
of the recent history of a region that has been
undergoing dramatic changes since 1989. As an
active foundation, it develops its own projects
within the framework of three programmes:
Social Development, Culture and Europe.
Three schools from Serbia, the Slovak
Republic and Slovenia joined forces for the
award-winning aces project on creative and
environmental topics, ‘Change Your Future
by Accepting the Present’.
One student said:
“I HAVE REALISED THAT DESPITE THE FACT
WE COME FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES WE
ARE THE SAME HUMAN BEINGS AND WE LIKE
SIMILAR THINGS.“
What would you
change?
www.erstestiftung.org
CONTEXT
IMPACT
FACTS
275 SCHOOLS FROM 15 COUNTRIES
700 TEACHERS + 5,400 STUDENTS
Do you think that education contributes
to the process of European integration?
Would you like to participate in shaping
the future of Europe? Do you want to
develop friendships across borders and
take part in international school projects? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you have come to the
right place! Let us tell you more about
aces — Academy of Central European
Schools.
Given half a chance, young people can
become active citizens participating fully
in society; they can also become good
friends. With aces we give more than half
a chance to thousands of young people
across Central and South Eastern Europe
– the chance to meet, teach, learn from
and have fun with their peers and others
in different countries of the region. This is
vital in a part of Europe where ignorance
and prejudice have often soured relations
between neighbours.
Young people’s openness to new and exciting experiences can help kick-start a new
era of curiosity and cooperation in Europe.
Across countries where there is a lack or
unevenness of educational resources, aces
puts young people on an equal footing in
a truly intercultural setting.
In just a few short years, aces has almost
doubled the number of partner countries
in its network, becoming the largest of
its kind in the region. This strong network
of schools in so many countries, EU and
non-EU alike, has laid the foundations
for a sustainable structure of education
exchange in the region. Supported from
the very start by all the education ministries involved, aces joins the forces of
the grassroots and the high-level. Though
there are strong EU educational programmes out there, there is nothing quite
like aces. aces fills a gap, but it does
much more than that: with its innovative
approach that blurs distinctions between
the teacher and the taught, it has helped
shape a new space for learning, improving the quality of education provision in
the region.
aces is a Central European network of
schools offering support for cross-border
school partnership projects with focus
on European themes and topics. It is
one of our major projects running since
2007, involving schools and ministries
from fifteen countries. Administration
costs and paper work are kept to a minimum, so that resources go straight into
the project itself. There is a huge appetite among schools in Central and South
Eastern Europe for the aces approach.
This can be seen in the deluge of school
partnership project proposals for the
yearly aces contest.
As much as aces is concerned with process rather than merely product, the
yearly topics are always relevant to the
region and to the lives of young people.
So far the participants had a chance to
research European values, intercultural
dialogue, conflict resolution and voluntarism. All students are aged 12 to 17, and
the common language of communication
is English.
CONTACT
ERSTE Foundation
Friedrichstraße 10, 4th floor
1010 Vienna, Austria
T +43 (0)50 100-15100
[email protected]
www.erstestiftung.org
Photo on the left:
Project presentation at aces Academy 2011 in
Prague.
Photos on the left:
In the course of an aces cycle, delegations of
pupils and teachers from all participant schools
get together in two major network events: the
kick-off meeting and the aces Academy.
Project Management:
Robin Gosejohann
T +43 (0)50 100-15432
[email protected]
www.erstestiftung.org/project/aces-academy-ofcentral-european-schools
www.aces.or.at