Helping each other: sustainability in a longterm partnership Erasmus Project

Project Title

Helping each other: sustainability in a longterm partnership

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Energy and resources; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Helping each other: sustainability in a long term partnership

The title of our project reflects our both schools’ effort, to keep a partnership between Barendrecht (NL) and Louny (CZ) alive. Although the bond between the two cities still exists, it seems to be threatened by the ageing of their members. In mutual visits, both schools found similarities in their teaching methods, as well in their desire to revitalize the bonds between the intertwined cities with a schooling project. We hope that younger generations will have the opportunity to make the relationship between the cities sustainable. That is also the link to environmental sustainability. We believe that topics of common interest, like a healthy living space, will trigger an attitude that combines self awareness with the ability to take responsibility. For your own life, but also for the life and well-being of others. Both schools are secondary schools and the participants were chosen based on their interest in internationalization.

In our project, we wanted to address the topic of ‘sustainability’ on various levels, such as:

1. enlarging self awareness regarding one’s role as consumer
2. stimulating the ability to see the impact of your consumption pattern on the environment
3. seeing the similarities in the different countries of the EU regarding the problems with our energy households
4. translating self awareness in responsibility for the self and for others
5. working together with partnered countries to solve risen problems in a mutual effort
6. being able to see the link between a micro, meso- and macro-level concerning environmental issues

Our learning strategies revolve around the principle of enforcing self-reliant learning strategies. Learning about yourself will awake self-confidence and the ability to plan and organize set goals within a given time schedule. The monitoring of achieved results in this project are entirely linked to their dissemination: by the use of a so-called ‘wikigreen’, a freely accessible database for environmental issues, all stakeholders will be immediately informed about the results in the various stages of the project. The first year of the project is dedicated to the micro-level, one’s personal choices and awareness about products and services. The second year will focus on the meso-level, on sustainable entrepreneurship. In the last year, finally all results come together in describing the countries national energy supplies. In the first two years, we will use surveys to get grip on the status quo of both countries and in the last year we will visit national energy suppliers in order to describe and judge the impact of our engineering techniques. Although in both schools, a lot of lessons with more participants will address these topics in special lessons about the meaning of internationalization, the number in the actual project meetings will be reduced to 12 pupils from each country a year, together with two teachers (for both countries 36 participants throughout the project). In all meetings representatives of the local/national authorities are invited, as well as other stakeholders (for example the “Stedenband”).

What we achieved with the project, also as longer-term benefits:

– we could enhance foreign language skills (English and during the project also other languages);
– the pupils were able to plan and realize all the main objectives themselves;
– developing self-awareness of environmental issues by: stimulating active citizenship in showing that younger people’s opinion does count and
emphasizing the importance of European cooperation on transnational issues;
– the students developed useful ICT-skills for maintenance of a user portal;
– we developed lesson material in internationalization on both schools;
– the partnership between Barendrecht and Louny was ‘refreshed’ by new members of a younger generation;
– as a side-effect of the last point: the cooperation between younger and older generations (Stedenband) were part of the exchange, so that sharing experiences and ideals can lead to new outlooks on a subject of shared interest;
– a lasting impact of the project by the wikigreen, by allowing other users from all over the world to share their information on the topic of sustainability

In general, we intended to address the problem of what could result from not taking care of our environment as a whole. We are, after all, a biological species which relies like all other biological species on this planet for our continuing survival. In order to achieve our objectives of awareness, we concentrated on self-awareness skills within our students, honing their abilities to make conscious choices as consumers when buying and using products, let them see the importance of recycling certain products, and over all let them experience that self-awareness involves responsibility for the self and for others.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 47950 Eur

Project Coordinator

Dalton Lyceum Barendrecht & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Obchodni akademie a Stredni odborna skola generala Frantiska Fajtla,Louny, prispevková organizace