Schools for future – be part in creating an eco-friendly world Erasmus Project

Project Title

Schools for future – be part in creating an eco-friendly world

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: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Environment and climate change; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Our earth and therefore our environment is the most important thing we have and we have to protect it for ourselves and for the sake of future generations.
We are aware of the climate changes that the world is facing at the moment and it is time to act. Our pupils today, as adults in the future, will feel the effects of climate change and that is why it is important to educate them for living their lives in a sustainable way in order to meet the challenges that await them. We have to teach them in the areas of ecology, sustainable development, environmental protection, recycling and health. The starting point of ecological culture is the preservation of the natural environment as a value in itself and the value of the
individual as a subject of environmental protection. This is why we want to use the potential of the existing resources in our school that are currently unused. We want our school to become eco-friendly and sustainable.
Many adolescents are afraid of the future and they want to change their behaviour in order to protect the environment, but they don’t know how exactly they can create a change since this topic is overwhelming. With this project we do not only want to arouse the awareness of environmental problems, but create together with the pupils a guideline which includes strategies for a sustainable way of life. Since school is the center of their world we will start at this point and try to become an eco-friendly school. This way we can be an example for all our pupils and for other schools to follow.
The essance of our project is to learn from other schools and observe other ways to protect the environment. As we want to get as many new ideas and input as possible to create strategies to become an eco-friendly school, we decided to work with at least four different schools. Europe has many different areas with a variety of ecological problems and challenges. Therefore, the four participating schools are located in different spots of Europe to get an extensive picture of the problems and possibilities: Spain, Germany, Croatia and Latvia. The project will last two years and the participating pupils are 13 to 14 years old. We will work with pupils who are motivated to work on this topic, who have a good level of English and who can host an exchange partner, since the travelling pupils will sleep in host families. Each school will choose 18 pupils who will do the exchanges, but there will be many more pupils participating, because this project concerns everybody.
After getting to know each other through presentation videos of themselves and their schools, they will learn more details about the environment and the challenges we are facing in the world. After that, each school will assess both the strategies already done to live in a sustainable way and the environmental problems existing at their own schools. Subjects that will be evaluated are waste control, recycling system, ecological footprint, use of resources, energy-demand and sustainability among other things. This will be done through surveys in which the whole school will participate: pupils, teachers, principals, secretaries and caretakers. After analizing the studies, the paticipants will produce a presentation in which they introduce the school – including all the gathered information from the surveys – to their exchange partners. Once a month – from Februrary to May – six pupils from each school will travel for one week to another country and get to know the schools and their behaviour towards the environment. During this week the hosting school will present the created presentation and together with the exchange students they will work on individual strategies to improve their sustainability at school. This week should be used to learn from each other, talk about the topic and improve the strategies to become an eco-friendly school and, therefore, help to create an eco-friendly world. The exchange students will travel back to their schools with lots of new impressions and ideas how to improve their own school concerning this matter. After choosing strategies to improve the school, they will be implemented for one year and afterwards evaluated due to their realizability and usefulness.
If everything works out as planned, this project will have a huge impact on the everyday life of the pupils and the schools. The developed strategies should be implemented permanently at the schools and also be taken home to families and friends. The schools can serve as examples for other schools and we will try to spread the ideas as far as possible. This will work due to different outputs: a (video-)guide for everybody to follow, workshops that will be presented by the pupils for other pupils, posters that increase the awareness of this topic and articles published in the local press and the school homepages.
As you can see lots of people benefit from this project: schools, pupils, society and after all – and most importantly – our environmen

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 119545 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Siegburg Alleestrasse & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Skrundas secondary school
• I. osnovna skola Bjelovar
• NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL CARMEN-SAN VICENTE PAÚL