Beşiktaş – New educative channel

The Beşiktaş Academy has started offering online classes launching its new Youtube channel. This initiative from the Beşiktaş Municipality has been helping students prepare for high school and university education and also supporting the personal development of our citizens aged 7-90 through culture and art courses. This service will not only enable students who are preparing for their exams to continue studying their lessons but also give citizens the option to learn at any age. Visit the Youtube channel here

Contact: foreignaffairs@besiktas.bel.tr

Nice – Back to school

The mayor of Nice is consulting with the directors of the 154 public schools, parents and parents’ representatives, and with a local scientific council. The consultation aims at finding how to best organise the gradual reopening of schools announced by the government. The city has also created a free tutoring app ‘Prof in the pocket’ to help its students. Read more here (in French)

Contact: Jérôme Sieurin

Florence – Civic crowdfunding

Florence has joined forces with local stakeholders and active citizenship to launch a crowdfunding initiative. Collected funds will help finance projects in areas such as welfare, education and culture. Four projects have already been selected through the platform. These have financed the purchase of medical equipment for a retirement home, a dedicated food delivery system for people in financial difficulty, and the purchase of tablets for students to guarantee access to online education. Read more here (in Italian)

Contact: Alessandra Barbieri

Lublin – Measures for foreign residents

Lublin is supporting foreign residents by making practical information available, looking out for underage non-national students, and centralising services. Measures include:

  • A website in English https://lublin.eu/en/and Ukrainian (largest migrant community) https://lublin.eu/ua/ with the latest updates on the situation in Poland and Lubelskie, as well as current regulations or restrictions in force and links to social assistance, education, culture and sports, NGOs working for foreigners, and so on. More information here;
  • A hashtag, #stayathome, linked to an English-language database to offer services given by local businesses to Lublin residents more easily during Covid-19. More information here.
  • And special attention to underage foreign students. More information here.

Lublin is also sharing its experiences related to the functioning of local government during pandemic with partner cities and a wider spectrum of municipalities in Ukraine.

Contact: Roman Jaborkhel

Oulu – Online learning quality check

Oulu, in collaboration with OpenDigi, has compiled quality recommendations to follow when offering online education. The city agreed on a set of standards to guarantee quality and clarify the responsibilities of the various parties. It collects a series of rights that address equally students, guardians and educators. Read more here

Contact: Anne Rannali

Cardiff – Pre-school support for families

The Cardiff based organisation Flying Start has gone online to continue delivering services to pre-school children and their parents. Appointments, group parenting as well as health and therapy services have all been moved online. While ‘Stay and Play’ sessions have been replaced by a range of fun activities to do with children shared on social media. Read more here

Contact: Beverley Watson

Nice – Dance and music

Nice is supporting its Conservatory in giving effective lessons. The dance department offers courses in fitness, ballet history and anatomy, the creation of a chamber ballet, and the exchange of videos of international ballets. The Music department has created a youtube channel for students on the alert. It also offers video exchanges, daily tutorials and skype lessons. Finally, the Theater department has set up a discussion forum. It also offers remote debates on shows, or even video exchanges. Read more (in French) in the attached press release.

Contact: Jérôme Sieurin

Dusseldorf – Poems over the phone

The municipal Heinrich-Heine-Institute in Dusseldorf, a museum dedicated to the German poet Heinrich Heine, offers the reading of poems and other texts over the phone during the time it is closed due to the corona regulations. The museum also publishes educational videos, readings and quizzes on Instagram and Facebookto to keep eager Heine fans busy. Read more here (in German).

The municipal Clara Schumann music school offers digital music classes for its students. The lessons are conducted online or via video messages, students receive their music sheets online and send their rehearsed recordings to the teacher. Read more here (in German)

Contact: Stefanie Nietfeld

Bamberg – Online education

Bamberg – educational resources on the internet

While schools are temporarily closed, Bamberg has established an online platform that contains exercises and working materials for students. These materials serve a dual function, as they also relate to Bamberg’s cultural heritage. Read more (in German) here.

Contact: Patricia Alberth

Turin – Collecting free online services

Torino City Love lists a number of free online resources and actions offered by the city’s partners and other businesses from Italy and beyond. The offer includes resources on education, health, connectivity, collaboration solutions, tools to work and/or study remotely, collaboration solutions, and connectivity. Read more here and here (in Italian) for more measures

Contact: Antonella Detta

Rome – Libraries against isolation

Rome’s libraries are making their catalogue available online for free with the #cultureathome campaign. People can subscribe for a free membership that will give them access to over 7100 periodicals from 90 countries in 40 different languages, the main national and international newspapers, and widely circulated magazines. Users will also be able to borrow from 2 to 4 e-books. Read more here

Contact: Tamara Lucarelli

Tallinn – School lunch continues

Students of Tallinn’s schools will be able to continue to get a daily free school lunch under a special arrangement approved by the city’s authorities. Normally, school lunch is free in Tallinn for the students, but due to the emergency situation all schools are closed in Estonia. As for some children  the school lunch is the only hot meal during the day, the Tallinn has decided to continue to make free school lunches available to students who need it.

Schools will inform families about the availability of a free meal and where the students can get it via the eKool (e-School) online environment and the schools’ web pages. To start getting free school lunches, the family must inform the school, as the number of meals prepared will depend on the number of those who wish to get them.

“Since for some children the school lunch is the only hot meal of the day, we do not consider it possible to deprive the children of it. Therefore the Tallinn crisis committee decided to arrange for the provision of hot school meals for the children in need of help,” Deputy Mayor Vadim Belobrovtsev said. “The most important thing in the current situation is caring, and for aid to reach the children who need it most,” the deputy mayor said, urging schools and families to work together on this. Read more (in Estonian) here.

Contact: Kerttu Märtin