“Seeds of Light” Project

“Improving the educational system in Azerbaijan is also among our goals, and we will spare no effort to support education in our hosting country. We also support international students who live in Azerbaijan and receive education here. We provide all the students with an opportunity to develop.”

Francesco Banchini

CEO & Director of EAS

Following the patriotic war in Karabakh, on December 12, 2020, Francesco Banchini, CEO and Director of the European Azerbaijan School, and other school staff visited more than 30 families in Barda, as well as the village of Garayusifli, which suffered the most during the war.

With the funds collected between the school staff and parents, they tried to be with the families of our citizens wounded and killed during the war, providing them with both material and moral support, and to share their grief

It was on this occasion when Francesco Banchini announced his initiative to offer free education to students and provide teacher development to schools in Barda and Aghdam regions starting from December 18.

The launch of the "Seeds of Light" Project

The “Seeds of Light” (“İşıq Toxumları”) project launched by the European Azerbaijan School with the support of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan on December 18, 2020.

The main goal of the project is to organize additional classes on various subjects for students studying in Barda and Aghdam, which suffered the most during the war, and to achieve a high level of development of online education in pandemic situation.

Executing the project, during the second half of the academic year in 2021, several EAS volunteer teachers conducted online classes for schoolchildren living in Barda and Aghdam, as well as working with their teachers to share educational strategies. Around 350 students attended these lessons.

During the meeting with the teachers of Barda and Aghdam, it became clear that the impressions of both groups were significant.

Aslanova Gulnara, a teacher of Azerbaijani language and literature at secondary school No. 149 in Aghdam district:

“I am sure that the “Seeds of Light”, a joint project of the European Azerbaijan School and the Education Department of Aghdam district, will be a new contribution to the lives, education and future careers of our prospective students. Our benefit in the “Seeds of Light” project is to increase our students’ self-confidence and explore the potential strategies that teachers form EAS are sharing with us.”

A comment from Javad, a grade 8 student:

“The history lesson was in English, I could understand , and I answered all the questions.”

Or Reyhan from the same grade:

“I prepared a presentation together with the students from another school. I displayed myself as an active student”.

It is a sign of the increasing level of students’ self-confidence.

Our 6th-grade student Aysel, who is taking math classes:

“I clearly understood the topic of positive and negative numbers taught by the EAS mathematics teacher”, – she said, it is an example of our students’ success in this project and the evidence of the useful transferable skills used in the EAS programme.

Our 9th-grade student Khadija said that she loved the Azerbaijani language teacher of EAS and attended her classes with enthusiasm.

“I can confidently say that this project has shown the best way of interdisciplinary integration and the use of transferable skills across different disciplines.

Since my speciality is Azerbaijani language and literature teaching, it was a great pleasure to meet and work with EAS teachers. We established a constructive dialogue and focused our attention on the subject’s teaching, developing skills and discussed the ways about involving students in education during the unprecedented situation.”

Hamidova Ifade, a mathematics teacher at school No. 8 in Barda:

“In a short period of time, I witnessed the high level of professionalism in teaching and learning process in the European Azerbaijan School and a different approach to the topics covered.
The use of English as the main language of instruction and the presentation of the topics using interesting slides engaged the students and made the lessons more interesting for them.
Each time, our students look forward to the next lesson.

In my classes, I applied the innovative methods I learned from EAS teachers. In this case, I see that the teaching is more effective and remarkable.

I want to thank the staff of the European Azerbaijan School for creating this opportunity for us.
I would like to have such trainings in the future, too.”

The final phase of the “Seeds of Light” project was completed on June 7.

Francesco Banchini, CEO & Director of our school, Kamilla Orujova, Primary Principal and Ragsana Mammadova, former Secondary Principal shared their impressions on the completion of the “Seeds of Light” project implemented by the European Azerbaijan School with the support of the Ministry of Education.

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