Don’t panic, reduce plastic : Mobilization is fantastic Erasmus Project

Project Title

Don’t panic, reduce plastic : Mobilization is fantastic

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Nowadays, plastic is everywhere. Our goal with this project is to raise awareness about the over-consumption of plastic among our youth so that we can make them the actors of change.

We started this project with 2 partners: Halit Armay Anadolu Lisesi High school in Istanbul, Turkey (850 pupils) and institut Saint Michel High school in Neufchateau, Belgium (510 pupils). In each school, we planned to have a group of 6 pupils in each country to do the mobilities.

During the first mobility, 2 Belgian teachers and 3 Turk teachers came to France to attend a formation about marine life given by Frédérique PICHARD. This is the time when we agreed to accept every volunteer on our project. We chose to accept the 12 volunteers from France and Turkey and the 10 volunteers from Belgium. We wanted to raise awareness among our youth so we decided to organise a turnover of pupils for the mobilities.

The 2nd mobility took place in France. We received 4 colleagues (2 from Belgium and 2 from Turkey) and 10 Pupils (4 Belgians and 6 Turks). The French pupils participating in the activities were 12. Like planned in the candidature file, we visited the Whale’s Park in Luc sur Mer. In this park, there is a whale’s skeleton exposed freely which we wanted to reproduce at scale ½ so that it could be an object of awareness raising campaign. We visited ENSI in Caen which is an engineer school specialized in materials. We spent an afternoon cleaning the beach in Sallenelles and we talked with Mr JEGOUREL from the ‘Rivages propres’ (Clean Shore) association. He explained us the importance of taking care of littorals. Mr DUCHESNE came to the school to give the pupils an acting class because our students had to create and film little clip to raise awareness about plastic. Finally, we took our guests to the memorial of Caen before their departure. All these activities were punctuated with sharing times and other times when our pupils had to cooperate, like when they started to build the whale.

The third mobility took place in Belgium in March, 2020. This mobility took place in the beginning of the pandemic so our colleagues Turks were not able to join us. The parents of the pupils were opposed to their departure.

We went to Belgium with 10 pupils. We chose to take the train and the group price allowed us to bring 10 pupils instead of the 6 planned all the while staying in the limit of the grant. We talked with our Belgian colleagues who told us that 4 more pupils wouldn’t be a problem for the organization of the mobility. Belgian pupils were 8 participating in the activities. The planned activities were the follow-up of the ones done in France. We visited firms that meet the reducing waste goals that we promote and a waste management facility. Our pupils had the chance to meet a European Deputy who talk with them about managing waste at the European scale. On Thursday, we spent the morning writing scenario for the videoclips. We did that through videoconference so that our Turk partners could do this with us, from Istanbul. We also learnt, with our pupils, how to do our own household products. The end of the mobility was spent doing the video editing of our raising awareness clips, also through videoconference with our partners from Turkey who realised their clips on this week too.

The pandemic prevented us from doing the last 2 mobilities scheduled in 2021. We managed to plan a virtual mobility with the Turks. The Belgians told us a month before that they wouldn’t be able to continue this project and participate in the virtual mobility. Unfortunately, three weeks before our virtual mobility, French president Macron announced on TV that we had to confine ourself again and that the holidays would be moved two week earlier, at the exact time of our mobility. Those elements forced us to cancel the virtual mobility.

We still managed to do some activities during the pandemic. In France, we organized the distribution of reusable water bottle to avoid using plastic bottle. The Turks visited a waste management facility and installed sorting bins all over their school. They also organised a waste’s collect and they visited the bienal on the plastic’s Continent.
Our objectives were only partially met. We were able to do the prevention clip but the cloth bags were done only by our Turk partners and the plastic whale was not finished.
This project acted like an electroshock for our school which decided to create a ‘Sustainable committee’ whose goal is to better sort waste and obtain a sustainability label. Turks organized sensibilisation online and face to face with their pupils. They decided to pursue this event now that our project is done. Our Belgians partners invest in reusable cup and a water fountain. They also created a group ‘Ecolog’ISM’ which highlight the problem of climate change. Its actions: Installing Ecosia on all the computers of the school and stop distributing overpackaged candy during the Saint Nicolas festivities

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 45099,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Association de l’Institut Professionnel Lemonnier & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Halit Armay Anadolu Lisesi
• Institut Saint-Michel