Climate Change and the Future – Food for Thought Erasmus Project

Project Title

Climate Change and the Future – Food for Thought

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: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Most young people of today have heard about the problem of climate change. Thanks to the educational programmes becoming more eco-sensitive, local initiatives and public campaigns in social media, they start to realise that the threat to our planet exists. However, for many of them this threat remains too abstract or too complex to handle. They fail to understand that their unsustainable consumer patterns or their daily habits can be extremely harmful to the environment and can contribute to climate change. And this is partially due to the fact that the national educational curricula, though striving to raise students’ awareness about climate change, are still too theoretical. The schools often neglect the necessity to provide young learners with practical skills and solutions to help them adapt more sustainable lifestyles.
The current project “Climate change and the future – food for thought” seeks enabling changes in daily behavior, consumption patterns, and lifestyle choices for young people. It aims at transforming them into eco-responsible citizens fully aware of their personal impact on climate change and at making them aware of the changes they can bring into the world if they behave in a more sustainable way. It also seeks to empower young people to influence their families and their peers to adapt their lifestyle choices to a more eco-reasonable mode. Another global aim of the project is to develop interdisciplinary educational materials in Science, English, Arts, Geography and ICT that will teach about climate change in a less abstract manner and will help young people set real goals towards improving the future of our planet and motivate them to achieve these goals.
The project focuses on a very precise aspect of sustainable behavioral change: cooking and household related issues. Throughout two-year long collaboration the students will work on the creation of an eco-friendly virtual cookbook accompanied by a Youtube channel. The cookbook will be both, a book of recipes and a collection of recommendations and solutions on eco-friendly cooking. With the help of this book we will reach out to more people about our findings and tips to become more environmentally friendly and to make active choices that would benefit our climate in a positive way.
The project will be carried out with 11-12 year old students and all together there will be about 100 young ambassadors for climate change who will then teach and influence their peers and their families to become more active citizens when it comes to being responsible for our planet. Educational teams from each partner country comprise 4-5 teachers who will create educational materials in their subjects and share them with their colleagues.
The project methodology is conceived in such a way that each student mobility is prepared by profound virtual collaborative work via the TwinSpace of the project. The students will start their journey by looking for the proofs if the climate change really exists in their regions. They will analyze the environmental footprints of their households in order to understand to what extent each of us contributes to climate change. And then they will discover Greenland, the thermometer of the world, where they will observe the tremendous impacts of human activities on climate. Before going to Italy, a homeland of the Mediterranean diet, the students will explore their consumption patterns and understand the importance of buying local food. They will continue by working on sustainable cooking techniques and the issues of leftovers before arriving to Sweden, one of the most efficient countries in recycling and waste management. They will create their sustainable recipes based on the knowledge gained so far in order to take part in the Eco Top Chef competition in France, the country of culinary traditions. After each mobility the students will work together on creating of the content of their eco-friendly cookbook.
By creating our cookbook we will raise questions based on Agenda 2030 which intend to make changes for children all over the world. Working together in the international context will encourage our students to become active citizens in a global point of view. We will build relations crossing borders and improve our cultural skills as well as our level of English in an authentic context and strengthen our European identity. We will influence our schools and our society to implement necessary steps towards a better world. We will also get the opportunity to teach each other on things we do differently, things that have been successful at our schools and in our countries.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 201946 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kangillinnguit Atuarfiat & Country: GL

Project Partners

• ASS.PIERRE POYET EC ST JOSEPH
• Istituto Comprensivo Statale “Fiorentino”
• Futuraskolan International Bergtorp