Dominik Polehňa participated in the Comenius project, an EU-funded program that brings together students from different countries. Students from the Czech Republic, Turkey, Italy, and Poland collaborated on tasks in their home countries and met in Turkey. The tasks included creating a travel agency and website focused on Italy, performing as clowns and princesses at a preschool, and teaching dances and songs from their native countries. While the tasks provided an educational experience, Dominik felt the greatest benefit was having the opportunity to meet students from other cultures and visit parts of the world he otherwise would not be able to. He hopes to participate in another Comenius project in the future.

1. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
About our Comenius
I’m Dominik Polehňa and I had that luck to participate in the project in our school. I
study at High School in Uherský Brod with focus on industrial and commercial academy.
Comenius is project of The European Union. Project is focused at school education
and it’s for students above 15. Understanding between young people from different
countries is objective of the project. The program involved a lot of countries. In our school
project were these four: Czech, Turkey, Italy and Poland. From each country travelled four –
six students. It’s not just for students, but for teachers, personnel, etc.
Our English teacher told us about the project. Four students, including me, wanted to
go too. But when they found out they had to do some tasks, two of them left. I entered the
project before the last journey, Turkey. We had to do some tasks. We usually made
meetings, where we discussed our tasks. Our teachers gave us one task at every meeting.
We usually had one week to do it. After first meeting I told myself “It’s worth it”. One week
in Turkey for a moment of time.
First task was to make a travel agency, where we had to devise trips, hotels, prizes
and website. We had to focus on Italy near Padova with our trips. All things were easy to do,
because in that place are a lot of historical monuments, but website was a little hard, so I
think it wasn’t the best task, because not everyone might be able to do it. Fortunately, we
are the technical school, where we learn this, so we shared tasks and everyone had to do
something. Anyway every country did it well. I don’t know if teachers help them to do it, but
some websites were pretty good. It took a lot of time. Other countries surprised us, because
they prepared commercial items for us and that was really good move for the successful
rating.

2. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The second task was to help our students from subject of social work at volunteering
activity in a preschool. We needed to do two clowns and one princess and introduce their
theatre. This was interesting, we could try how we do with children. For this action we had
to do a poster. Our students from engineering managed it because they have subjects with
graphics.
The third task was funny. We had to prepare one dance and one song to sing from
different country. We got Italy, so we prepared Polesana traditional dance and Renato
Carosone – Tu Vuò Fa' L'Americano as song. The dance didn’t have huge rating, but our song
took a big applause. We showed our dances and songs to children in preschool in Turkey.
But like always there were some complications, because someone like me forgot white shirt
at home. Turkish guys were kind, so they lent us theirs.
In Turkey we made other tasks on computers where we had to find differences
between our four countries. Differences between sport, theatre, music, job, eat, etc. We
thought it was easy, but it wasn’t. When we arrived back to Czech, our teacher told us “You
badly understand the tasks”, so we had to remake it.
I think it’s really good to have projects like this in our country, because it’s not just
about this tasks and education, but we can see other parts of the world. Not everyone can
afford these travels. This project is good for every student who wants to see something new
and likes meeting new people from different countries. I really enjoyed it and I hope I will
have that luck to participate in this project again.
Dominik Polehňa

3. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held
responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.