Reading is fundamental to human development as it enables people to live full and meaningful lives and contribute to the all communities and societies. Reading skills have an impact on all aspects of daily life, from school to employment and from health care to social life.

The project “Reawakening the Values depicted in European Society via Literary Work” involves 4 schools from 4 European countries: Lithuania, Spain, Turkey, Latvia. This project aims at detecting and unearthing the intrinsic values the students have through reading. The pupils will rediscover their in-built feelings like responsibility, success, self-respect and self-esteem via books through innovative teaching methods. They will read books from different cultures and do cross-cultural activities. Within the context of this study, our students will discover virtues of other European nations by examining their work of literature and will have the chance to increase their understanding of different cultures. This study makes endeavor to generate and engage students’ interests and excitement in positive manners. Our target group is teenagers between the aged 13 and 18 who have ongoing English classes. Normally from each institution 4 students and 2 teachers will attend each study visit but other students in these schools will also take part in project activities.

Our main objective regarding the project is to show our students the virtues of reading and lead them to spending more time with books with innovative approaches. With this project, our students will experience unique methods that will change their views towards reading in a positive manner. They will learn great amount of knowledge on other European countries and increase their ability to emphasize about people from other cultures. The project will also give them the chance to advance their skills in English and improve and expand their vocabulary. In order to meet these objectives, we will use innovative methods that will make the process a fun learning experience for the students. Each partner school has a different method to share that they will share with all participants.

For students this project will be a unique chance to increase and apply their gained knowledge about European cultural heritage of partners’ countries, raise their awareness, understanding, tolerance and respect of cultural and social differences between nations, enlarge their foreign language competences and motivation in language learning, build up higher level skills through reading such as, problem solving, decision making, cooperation, organizational, literacy skills.

For teachers it will be a great chance to cooperate with the teachers from the other countries, to improve their pedagogical skills by exchanging and sharing teaching methods, good practices and ideas that will enrich their pedagogical aspects, and to make contacts for further cooperation.

For participating schools, it is an important experience to develop links with other European schools, to get known about different educational systems and approaches.

For parents and general public, it is a great opportunity to find out more about European Union, European projects, to gain new experience by hosting international pupils and to find out more about various cultures in Europe. We believe that this project will have two major long-term effects on students and other participants; firstly, their approach to books and reading will change, enabling them to adapt a very beneficial habit. Secondly, they will experience other European cultures and understand the view of people from different nations, teaching them to break through prejudices and learn to empathize.