Secondary vocational school"Branko Radicevic" Ruma,Serbia

Hi! We are a secondary vocational school "Branko Radičević". We are from a small town Ruma, in Vojvodina which is a multicultural and multilingual region of Serbia. We are highly motivated for cooperation and we want integrate our experience into our future work. We educate economists, administrative assistants, financial technicians, technicians of clothes making, waiters, cooks and hairdressers. We want to find partners for cooperation. In our school the classes are held in modernly equipped classrooms, specialized classrooms and workshops. The school currently has over 500 students. Among them is a significant number of children of Roma nationality and children with special needs. Also there are around 80 employees, of which there are 60 teachers, who work with and take care of the students. In the school year ahead of us, we plan to enroll students into 6 new first grades, with the total of 180 students. The school has enough space for students, classrooms, specialized classrooms, workshops, a kitchen, a restaurant and a hair salon. Within the curriculum, our students have practical classes that last five week days, several times per year. The students have the chance to visit different government institutions on the local level, the courthouses, social services center and others, as well as lawyer offices and various private companies. Helping the employees with their work, the students can apply their theoretical knowledge and gain the valuable experience. Our goal is that our teachers and non-teaching staff improve their English language in order to work more easily on future exchanges and to participate more easily in the European integration on all school levels. We want better educational results and acquiring of the ICT qualification. From the extracurricular activities, we would like to point out The tolerance club - a discussion group which has been working for years on the breaking of the prejudices and stereotypes, through different types of activities, as well as on the strengthening of the perceptibility of intolerance and different types of discrimination. In November, as a part of the club activities, we discussed the topic of the Crystal Night, the night which is considered as the beginning of the Holocaust. On the 9th of November, for the anniversary of the Crystal Night, our students made a poster board with that topic, while the documentaries about the status and sufferings of Jews were played in the school projector room. Moreover, each year within The tolerance club, our most hardworking students travel to Switzerland together with their teachers for two weeks. Everyday our students, together with the students from other countries, participate in discussion groups which are organized in two shifts. Upon return, as a consequence of the good relations that were established in Switzerland, there is an exchange of students with the country from our discussion group. The visit to Switzerland in this school year is scheduled for April, and we will be planning the exchange with Moldova. Projects Although we are rather inexperienced when it comes to projects, we can mention several in which we have participated. The most important project was "The multiplication - live in tolerance" which was the long-term, interconnected and educational project, conducted in Vojvodina with the support of Pestalozzi children's foundation from Switzerland. The main goal of this project was the teaching of the democratic citizenship about tolerance and cohabitation through the educational programs, and a general tendency to build a modern democratic society with the active role of its citizens, especially young people. With our joint initiative and teaching about differences, different cultures, customs, religions and languages, we contribute to the lowering of the interethnic tensions and intercultural distances, we oppose to the stereotypes and xenophobia, affect the improvement of communication, mutual understanding and the beauty of cohabitation. Within this project, starting from 2009, the most active students and their mentors have had the chance to stay in the students' camp in Trogen in Switzerland together with the representatives from other countries. Moreover, we made the intercultural exchange with the Gymnasium from Slobodskoy, Kirov Oblast in Russia. The exchange was based as the job shadowing. The visit was repaid and we were the hosts on the same principle. In 2014 the students who attended the course for administrative assistant, participated in the organization Open door day of the Misdemeanor Court in Ruma. On that occasion, the students together with the the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and USAID organization have organized a simulation of the court process which dealt with the violation of the civil rights, more precisely the rights of the national minorities. Thanks to this simulation, our school was the only high school which was invited by The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and USAID organization to participate in the mootcourt competition in the simulation of the court process that was organized in Belgrade in December of 2014. Technicians of clothes making have had the professional training of students and teachers in the manufacturing facilities of the AMC (Serbia) and Calzedonia (Italia) factories. Each year our students and their teachers participate in the Fashion week as volunteers and as young, unknown fashion designers. Our cooks and waiters participate regularly in the gastronomic festivals as a part of the professional training held in renowned restaurants and hotels. Our students support and participate in different sports, cultural, religious and humanitarian manifestations which are organized in our town. Our school also collaborates with the secondary vocational school from Nikšić, where our students went for a two-week professional training. See: srednjabr.edu.rs Daniela Vasic, coordinator on the project Erasmus+ https://youtu.be/E2E6DorqeBE https://youtu.be/mSwb8VhUwYg