Environment and Sustainability – Understand, Care, Act! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Environment and Sustainability – Understand, Care, Act!

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Energy and resources; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

Our project’s main objective was the exchange of good practice in relation to environment and sustainability.
Project time: September 2018 – January 2021.
The participating schools were:
Scoala Gimnaziala Ghimbav, Romania; IES Rafael Alberti in Cadiz, Spain; Gymnasio Platania in Chania, Greece; and Gymnasium Ernestinum in Celle, Germany (coordinating).

There was a project group in each school (25-30 students aged 11 – 15 years) working continuously on the topic. The students communicated with the partner schools via, for example, eTwinning, email, and Whatsapp. Apart from the regular work in the schools, all students from the project group and teachers were supposed to travel to at least one of the LTT meetings (see below). So for each Learning Teaching Training meeting, there were supposed to be 24 mobilities, plus 6 mobilities for the teachers’ workshop at the end of the project (also see below). Due to Covid 19, the last two meetings, the 4th students’ meeting in Celle and the final teachers’ meeting in Càdiz, had to be cancelled.
There was one participant from Cadiz with special needs who was provided with extra assistance.

Our objectives were to raise awareness for environmental issues (UNDERSTAND), to work with students on appreciating our nature (CARE), to find out about the impact of their own lifestyle and the impact of their habits, and to learn how to minimize or optimize their impact (ACT). The chosen subtopics were:
1. Transport and mobility
2. Waste and plastic
3. Consumption of food
4. Consumption of consumer goods

We live in ONE world, so everything is connected. By starting an international project with European partners, we learned about coherences between our acting and the impacts this might have elsewhere. We profited and learned from ideas and activities our partners have done.

Practical activities which raised awareness for everyone’ own habits and behaviour (e.g. the waste, mobilty and food diaries, visit of a poultry farm, etc.) sensitized students for their own impact. These activities were followed by actions in which students learned how to act in order to decrease their negative impact (e.g. finding products in supermarkets which don’t contain microplastic or palm oil; decreasing their own carbon footprint by taking the bike instead of the car and buying local instead of far-traveled products).

To integrate the environmental and sustainability topic into the education of ALL students, school lessons were developed. Thus the knowledge and approaches for action will be available for the school communities.
Apart from that, different activities will be established into the schools’ calendar such as an “environmental day” or a “public transport day.” The schools as public institutions will thus become more environmentally friendly by optimizing structures and changing habits, by creating awareness beyond the school community through newspaper articles, cooperating with city administration and information on the schools’ homepages. For example, schools started using reclycled paper, thus helping to save water, energy, land and CO² emissions.

There were supposed to be four Learning Teaching Training (LTT) Meetings, one in each country, where students and teachers from every school met and worked on one of the 4 chosen subtopics. There was always a student conference, in which the students exchanged their thoughts and ideas. Apart from this, the focus was on practical activities. The last students’ meeting in Celle, focusing on consumer goods, had to be cancelled due to Covid 19. So we could only realise part of our goals for this last topic.
In the end, the teachers were supposed to meet in a fifth meeting in Càdiz, where we wanted to work on the final completion of the “Sustainability-Lesson-Booklet”, a concept for a “Teachers Train Teachers” day and long term guidelines for our schools in order to include the “Environment and Sustainability” topic into the school programmes/ long term curricula and thus make sure that the project’s results can have a lasting effect. As we were not able to meet in person because or the Corona pandemic, we did our best to reach our goals by organising video conferences and communicating via email and Whatsapp.

Sustainability is relevant for every single one of our students, families and fellow citizens, and the project helps our students and our school communities to feel responsible for nature. We are happy to feel that the experience gained in our project truly enabled the participants to lead a more sustainable lifestyle!

Finally, the multi-cultural cooperation itself lead to a more tolerant approach towards people with different personal backgrounds. By participating, the students made friends with people from different countries and cultures, and they found out that there is far more they share than what is different between them. This is an insight we definitely need for a peaceful future in Europe.

Project Website

https://school-environment-project.blogspot.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 100069,65 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Ernestinum Celle & Country: DE

Project Partners

• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA GHIMBAV
• Gymnasio Platania
• IES Rafael Alberti