National College "Spiru Haret", Romania🌍

  

🌍Eleven students from the National College "Spiru Haret", Targu Jiu, Romania : Oprea Patricia, Trotea Teodor, Cherteș Ștefania, Bengulescu Daria-Alexia, Epuraș Denis, Stroescu Alexa, Șelariu Sergiu-Mihai, Belea Alexandru-Ștefan, Andreea Șarlău, Stan Mario, Ciortan Robert-Andrei, accompanied by their teachers, Popescu Dana-Flaviola and Udrea Doriana, will walk a section of the Camino de Santiago, from Sarria to Santiago, from the 13th to the 18th of March together with young people from different European countries. The aim of the project is to promote European values and of course, the European elections which will take place between the 6th and the 9th of June 2024. 

The project will also compete for the Charlemagne Youth Prize.

The National College "Spiru Haret" is a primary, lower secondary, secondary and upper secondary school. Our institution is highly appreciated in both our local community and in our country. We have over 1500 pupils (from preparatory form to XII th grade) and over 100 teachers. There are different departments in our school: Mathematics- Computer Science- English bilingual, Philology- English /French Intensive, Social Sciences, Bio-Chemistry and also a Pedagogy department. Our school focuses on achieving great results at the national evaluation exams, school Olympiads and Cambridge exams.

Our college is actively involved in multiple ongoing projects, developed by different institutions, non-governmental organisations, associations and national foundations: The European Centre "Europe Direct', the British Council, the National Organisation of Scouts- Romania, the Vasiliada Centre for Social Inclusion, the Red Cross, the National Parks Administrative Office, "Let's do it, Romania!" association, "Les enfants d ailleurs" foundation and many more. For the past 4 years, we have taken part in four European Erasmus+ projects, one in which we are main coordinators- "Computer skills in modern education" and in one EEA Norway Grants 2014-2021 programme all of which are centered on values like equality, human rights, inclusion,diversity, environmental education. We also run the "First Tech Challenge" Robotics project that is on the list of national and international competitions. As a consequence, our school was awarded the "European School" status, earlier this year. In 2023 we have also received the European Parliament Ambassador School title.

Our students have been working as volunteers for the past years and are keen on making a change both in their school and in their local community. They have taken part in projects aimed to provide solutions to environmental problems like the pollution of the Jiu river and have worked on finding ways to provide sustainable incomes for locals living in the National Park "Defileul Jiului", in our county. They have also focused on raising awareness among their community on the importance of selective waste management by sharing their small scale-at school- practice. They are a generation of resourceful pupils, their ideas are complex and optimistic. They firmly believe they can make a difference and they have shown enthusiasm in all informative field visits taken in different projects and have kept in touch with team members in different foundations, park rangers etc, whom they also follow on social media.

Camino Europa 2024 is our latest endeavour and we are looking forward to take part in such a unique project that aims to bring together countries, communities and mentalities. Our main goal is to promote European values like solidarity, unity, diversity, tolerance, etc and to highlight the importance of taking part in the European elections in 2024.🌍

EPAS Coordinator : Dana Popescu (National College "Spiru Haret", Romania)