ECO-Aware Us for the Future ECO-EU Erasmus Project

Project Title

ECO-Aware Us for the Future ECO-EU

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: Health and wellbeing; Energy and resources; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The main objective of the project “ECO-Aware Us for the Future ECO-EU” is to educate today’s students to become tomorrow’s environmentally responsible citizens. We want to look at the possible ecological dangers and the dark future of the Earth if the mentality of today’s children is not changed to be more, if not totally, environmentally friendly. We believe that only environmentally conscious people can hope to preserve and protect the planet in the future. It is only logical to use schools as platforms for changing environmental awareness, especially since we know that there is a healthy interest in the environment among the students in our schools. Our motivation is to strengthen this interest and turn it into a potentially valuable teaching and learning tool. We want our students to be aware of the local and global ecological threats that hover over our health and to propose imaginative, effective and tangible solutions to this problem.

Among the biggest challenges we face today is environmental protection. At the international level, these concerns have echoed on many of the summits which have resulted in important resolutions which have not always been implemented, such as the Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Rio Declaration, the Declaration on Forests and Agenda 21, which have contributed to the identification of the problems and to the development of the increasingly comprehensive environmental awareness. It is in this spirit that we seek to change the attitude and behaviour towards the environment in order to prepare young people for knowledgeable, dynamic and conscious citizenship in the face of current environmental problems.

We want to make our students aware of the problems they will inherit in the future – that the planet they will have custody of will be in a much worse condition than what previous generations had to deal with. In fact, previous generations never had to worry about the environment, and even now that environmental problems are knocking on their door, they fail to identify them. This is why we believe it is important that our students are aware of movements such as Fridays for Future, through which young people try to ensure a secure future for themselves and for the Earth.

Apart from the objectives related to our priorities, we also want to promote the internationalisation of the teaching process in our schools and improve the participants’ English language skills (English will be the project language).

Throughout the duration of the project, we intend to hold meetings with students from our schools to share our findings. Upon their return, students participating in the LTTs will share the knowledge gained during the trip, which will hopefully broaden the circle of people shaping civic attitudes – paying more attention to the environment with an increased sense of responsibility.

Through the eTwinning and TwinSpace platforms, students and teachers will safely use the internet implementing international cooperation. We intend to use these resources to exchange information and educational materials. Students will participate in forums to introduce themselves, learn, coordinate and exchange information about the value of their environment and share their findings. Indeed, our schools have already collaborated with each other using eTwinning resources before we submitted this application, and we shared the first videos about the school’s immediate environment in winter, which already reflect the effects of climate change.

Our school is applying for the first time in the Erasmus+ programme, but our partners have more experience. This has proven to be very helpful even before we started writing the project as our partners brought many important issues to our attention. We have used the School Education Gateway to find schools from other European countries that have similar projects, or that were interested in our project and would like to become involved. The five partner institutions have been working together since the beginning of the year to prepare the project.

In the project preparation, implementation and follow-up phase, in addition to the already mentioned eTwinning platform, we will use Google Drive, Skype and Facebook as tools to keep in touch with our partners, communicate, coordinate, organise activities, share experiences and evaluate the results, so that we can change our approach if necessary.

Regarding the final phase, dissemination of the results, the Erasmus+ Results Platform will be very useful to show the scope and impact of activities resulting from our project both in the context of our organisations as well as the local communities. We will also create a project website where we can promote and share project results. We aim to increase environmental awareness not only in the communities of participating schools, but also to go beyond the boundaries of schools to the homes and families of our students.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 150590 Eur

Project Coordinator

Scoala Gimnaziala Calcan Ivan & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas de Cristelo
• MARESAL MUSTAFA KEMAL ORTAOKULU
• 107 Primary school “Khan Krum”
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 14 z Oddzialami Dwujezycznymi im. Armii Krajowej w Tychach