Biodiversité en Europe et moyens de la préserver Erasmus Project

Project Title

Biodiversité en Europe et moyens de la préserver

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Rural development and urbanisation; Natural sciences

Project Summary

The purpose of our project “Biodiversity in Europe and the ways to protect it” was to make the students aware of the importance of biodiversity by evaluating the actual state of biodiversity and by comparing the tools used to protect it locally in different European countries. The objective of the project was also to reinforce our students’ communication and scientific skills, make them open up to different European cultures and strengthen their sense of being European.

100 students were involved in this project, aged 15 to 17, together with high school teachers from 4 different countries: France, Italy, Spain, and Turkey.

The project was based on 4 meetings which had been scheduled in the application form, each one 7 to 8 days long, including 5 full days of activities on the topic.

In chronological order, these meetings took place in France (November 2016), Italy (April 2017), Spain (October 2017) and Turkey (April 218). The dates of the meetings in Spain and Italy had to be changed from what we had originally planned.

At least 42 students and their teachers took part in each meeting on the basis of 21 students from the hosting school (organizing the meeting) and 7 students from each of the other schools.

Each meeting included field activities, laboratory work, visits and conferences on the theme of biodiversity.

Four main topics were studied:
• During the French and Spanish meetings, we collected samples of macro invertebrates living in rivers, which are representative of the water quality, and we studied them in laboratory to determinate them;
• In Italy, we looked for traces of wolves in a national park to study them in laboratory in order to know more about the extension of some species’ territory;
• In parks and reserves located in France, Italy and Turkey, we observed birds to know more about birds’ protection;
• In France, Spain and Turkey, we met people working for specialised institutions and we made observations in the field to learn about how vegetal species could be protected and also about agro-ecology;

In-between meetings, students and teachers carried on preparatory or summarizing activities.

University teachers, researchers and specialists played an important part to ensure the scientific level of the observations and analyses we made during our different meetings.

Thanks to all these activities we created 13 panels intended to inform people and raise their awareness about the preservation of biodiversity.

We had a two-month extension for this project to organize a fifth meeting in October 2018. During this meeting which gathered most of the participants of the project, we managed to show the students the final panels they had created.

From October 2018 on, the panels have been exhibited in the different partner schools. They will also be exhibited in other places such as town halls, tourist offices, nature parks offices and other schools in order to inform as many people as possible about the preservation of biodiversity and highlight the great value of Erasmus + European exchange projects.

The teachers had two transnational meetings to discuss the project management: one in September 2016, at the very beginning of the project, to organize the different meetings and decide of the contents of the activities, the other during the complementary meeting with the students in October 2018 to discuss and prepare the final report.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 106340 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée Pierre Gilles de Gennes & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Liceo Scientifico Statale “E.Fermi”
• Özel izmir Amerikan Koleji
• Colegio Calasanz. Fundación Escolapias Montal