Going Green – Urban Challenges and Strategies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Going Green – Urban Challenges and Strategies

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Living a sustainable life is one of the major challenges across the globe. Climate Change is a dominant threat that must be tackled. Students from all three participating schools are highly interested in finding out about ways with which a sustainable lifestyle can be achieved and how our own acts influence the world around us. Nantes has been named the “European Green Capital” in 2013 and it will be a great opportunity for students and teachers from Warsaw and Buchholz to find out why this has been done and how strategies can be implemented in their own communities. The different projects in the three cities, that are already established, can give the students from the other schools ideas, as to how they can go even further in their efforts to turn their cities into green ones.
We aim to achieve four main goals:
1. exchange of ideas and practices of environmental projects at each individual school to learn from our partners.
2. raise awareness among the students as to how urban infrastructure has an impact on the possibility to live as sustainably as possible.
3. increase the intercultural competences of the students and teachers.
4. improvement of the students’ English capacities and the (re-)activation of topic-related vocabulary of the teachers.
The main group of participants are going to be the students. Roughly 30 students from each school are going to take part. At the beginning of the project the majority of students will be 13-15 years old. Each group of students will be accompanied by at least 2 teachers, preferably one class teacher and one other teacher.
There will be one meeting at each school, thus each visiting school will bring along about 15 students to one location and 15 students to the other location. The hosting students will either each host one student or (depending on the living circumstances) several students will be hosted by one local student.
The main activities will be the three project weeks at the respective schools. During a project week, the hosting school will prepare activities based on their unique infrastructure and environment.
Common activities will be the presentation of existing school projects related to sustainable living, the analysis and comparison of urban structures in the form of surveys and observations, a touristic day planned by the hosting families and a crash course in the respective language.
In Buchholz, the students will analyze the infrastructure and its effects on the environment.
The main activity in Nantes will be urban planning. The hospital will be moved to a different location in the next years and it will be the students’ task to plan how this land can be used sustainably.
In Warsaw, both of these activities will be combined. There will be an analysis of the infrastructure as well as urban planning, since the Warsaw hospital will also be moved to a different location.
Analysing the infrastructure of Buchholz and Warsaw will be done via surveys and observations beforehand as well as through examinations of soil, air and water during the project week. The samples will be analysed in the schools’ labs and the results will be published.
The urban planning in Nantes and Warsaw will be conducted after an on-site-visit. Students will collect and exchange ideas. In the case of Nantes, a video will be produced and handed over to the mayor to present our ideas.
We expect to find evidence of pollution in the air, water and soil samples in both Buchholz and Warsaw. Thinking about new ways of transportation and presenting our results to the people in power of decision in the cities, will hopefully lead to green strategies that will be implemented in the environment of the schools. At the same time, the results may show the students that their actions have an impact on the environment and it will show them new ways to have a positive impact.
The urban planning projects in Nantes and Warsaw will end with us giving recommendations to the mayors and hopefully some of these ideas will be implemented. Students will learn from this, that they can actively participate in the decisions made for their communities.
Another long term result might be the establishment of ongoing contacts between students and teachers from different countries and thus strengthening their intercultural competences as well as their European personalities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 96468 Eur

Project Coordinator

IGS Buchholz & Country: DE

Project Partners

• college paul doumer
• Szkola Podstawowa Nr 336 im Janka Bytnara Rudego