About
Our project “The Transatlantic School Initiative” is dedicated to transatlantic friendship, peace, cultural exchange, education and youth empowerment – by using civil society media and creative artforms, made by young people for young people from all regions of the USA and Germany. It is designed to build a cultural bridge and network with partner organizations both in Germany and the United States of America.
Media based training, education and radio production for teachers and children on German – US American themes by promoting German and English language skills.
The cultural tradition of our society is based on the sharing of stories that have been passed orally. Only much later, a primarily visually dominated society developed. Radio, the oral medium, helps to inspire the children’s imagination to create their own images. A poem can transform, for example, into a wonderful song that is set to music. But audio formats are also a great vehicle when it comes to sharing memories and stories, here in a transatlantic context. We at Radijojo would like to invite children and with them teachers of German language in the USA as well as students and teachers of English language in Germany to share their views, experiences and ideas about the transatlantic relationship, history and future between the two countries.
Project Organization
The project is designed to run over a period of three years, to commence in the fall of 2013 and to continue in 2014 and 2015 and end in 2016. With the help of our cooperation partners, the Goethe Insitute in the USA, The Association of American Teachers of German, we are building bilateral workshops to display the transatlantic nature in each project/theme and enable children but also their teachers to connect with and learn from each other. Therefore we like to organize workshops with partner schools by on-site radio/media production workshops with children and their teachers on concrete themes. The goal is to produce the results in a radio show to be aired on our website and via our international network stations both in the USA (prx, pacifica, community radios) and Germany to cherish the relationship between our countries.
Together with the children involved, we want to explore how the transatlantic future should look like and discuss urgent contemporary questions such as violence at schools, Children Rights and their realization, rights on access to education. We want to dive into the heritage Culture – collect oral testimonials (contemporary witnesses interviewed by students) and produce peace messages.
Please join and share the material produced by students in Germany and the USA for the Transatlantic School Initiative.
This project is made possible through the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany, with funding from the European Recovery Programme (ERP) of the Federal Office for Economy and Technology (BMWi).
