Creating and Living Sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creating and Living Sustainability

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: Energy and resources; Environment and climate change; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

The term sustainability has become an integral part of our daily lives and concerns each and every one of us. It’s no longer possible to read or watch the news without being confronted by the terms “Fridays for Future”, “climate change”, “globalization”, “global warming” and “consumerism”. These are just a few elect terms from a list that could be continued endlessly and that shows the necessity of getting involved in developing a more sustainable way of living. Our schools think that it is the responsibility of every educational institution to work on that goal which is why we would like to contribute to it by starting this project.
The participants of the project “Creating and Living Sustainability” are students and teachers from five schools in Spain, Italy, Denmark, Finland and Germany respectively as well as members of the Spanish organization BIOSFERA. There will be a meeting in each country which will be attended by three teachers and six students from each participating school. The participants for those meetings will be selected mainly by their interest in the project and their willingness to work on it. Nevertheless, the coordination team will try to include students of different age groups and types of school as well as teachers from different departments.
The activities of this project are designed in a way to reflect a continuous process, i.e. each meeting starts with the reflection upon the previous activities and results and then continues to work and improve them.
The first activity consists of the creation of an analysis of the current state in the participating countries. Suitable methods to compile such an analysis will be introduced by the organization BIOSFERA that will also support the participants in this endeavour. In the course of the following meeting, those analyses should provide a base for the needs assessment which the participants will have to compile in small groups. In this phase, each group will focus on one specialized area. As those areas are not yet defined and will be the result of the previous analyses of the current states, the methods to assess those needs cannot be determined at this point in time. After identifying the needs, the third meeting will be about the development of ideas for suitable solutions and the creation of those solutions. Said solutions could be concepts (e.g. guidelines for more sustainability in schools), services (e.g. sustainable services in tourism) or, if possible, products (e.g. products created from metal scraps). During this activity the groups are asked to analyze and evaluate their ideas in order to identify the most suitable solution. After the meeting, the resulting concepts, services or products will be tranferred into a trial period. In the fourth meeting, the results of the trial period will be reflected upon in order to optimize the solutions. Afterwards, those optimized results will then be put through a second trial period in order to determine if they produced the desired effect in terms of sustainability. Apart from determining the suitability of the results, the last meeting will also include their publication through talks, newspaper articles and websites.
In the course of their time at school, our students develop a variety of skills relating to school and its subjects. The participation in this project, however, will also facilitate the development of inter-disciplinary skills like project expertise and thereby prepare them ideally for the challenges of the world of work. Sustainability, however, is not only a challenge confined to the world of work and, therefore, our project aims not just at preparing our students of their future working lives but also for the challenges of their future lives in general. For this reason, it is important that they develop a deliberate and economical handling of nature and its resources. The result of such a consciousness can only be an environmentally aware and sustainable behaviour that will be internalized and shared. Furthermore, the European collaboration will strengthen the personal skills of our students (e.g. social and multicultural skills), help to develop a European consciousness and lead to the gain of new European partners for our schools. The work on the project “Creating and Living Sustainability” will also lead to the realization that the success of any project depends on the success of working in a team and the willingness to learn with and from each other – in this case on a European scale.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 130134 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gewerbliche Schule Lahr & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Zealand Business College
• I.S.I.S.S. Majorana
• TAMPEREEN KAUPUNKI