Healthy Ecojournalists Approaching Varied European Nature Erasmus Project

Project Title

Healthy Ecojournalists Approaching Varied European Nature

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: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

HEAVEN is a French-spanish project which aims at discovering, understanding and preserving European biodiversity by practicing outdoor sports. It will be coordinated by the Collège des Ylangs-Ylangs (Kani-Kéli) in the Indian Ocean’s French island of Mayotte with the European International School of Barcelona (EISB). In each school, a group of about 25 students, aged 14-15 years old, will take part in the project.

The two schools present very distinctive characteristics: geographical (mainland Europe vs oversea department), of population (over 1,5 million inhabitants city vs small remoted village), cultural (judeo-christian heritage vs 95% muslim island), economical (middle and higher economical classes vs under-priviledged students), scholar (private school vs public school). This difference allows connecting faraway people around an issue without borders : the preservation of environment and biodiversity.

The main objectives are:
O1: Increasing self-conscience about the globalty of environmental issues by investigating local biodiversity and how it is being affected by human activities.
O2:Linking the biological investigation with a meaningful and respectful practice of outdoor sports.
O3: Develop new skills about new technologies by creating various means of communication (video and photo editing, written and interactive documents, interviews, etc).

We will achieve those goals by the following activities:
A1: students will practice, use, and learn foreign languages in its different forms (written and oral comprehension, written and oral expression, interact) while communicating with the foreign school.
A2: Young eco-journalists will collect various information about their local environment by practicing outdoor sports. By kayaking, cycling, hiking, snorkeling, swimming they will get in direct contact with the surrounding biodiversity.
A3: Students will learn about local fauna and flora, its characteristics and evolution. Also they will have to understand the issues of human activity about its preservation. Videos and photos captured outside will be edited in order to build attractive and informative content. Every work on the project will be shared with the partner school so as students from both schools will be able to work on both environments.

The project will include two mobility programs of 5 students each. Those moments will reinforce the project as it will enable the young journalists to directly witness the partner’s environment and local biodiversity. Also, they will bring as much information as they can to share it once back home; there, they will have to compare both environments and report the local issues.
At the end of school year, both schools will work together to build a final video clip summarizing the project. This clip will not only include videos taken in the environment but also written biological explanations, analysis and comparison of those environments. This video clip will constitute the main final assessment tool of the HEAVEN project.
As a result we expect increasing the interest of students in different subjects such as biology and environmental preservation, languages or physical education. More precisely, we want to develop their capacity to take responsibilities and their will to take in hand their studies to success. At the same time, we aim at opening their horizons by getting them to know different people, different places and ways of living to understand it. Eventually, we expect our students, not only to success in their studies, but to join their hands in the future to impact the world. Regarding the importance of global warming and the human’s impact on the environment, we count on our eco-journalists to save the richness of the actual ecosystems. May this project be a small seed in their mind to a deep change of mentalities and behaviors in the future.

Evaluation:
Monitoring and evaluation will be a continuous process going on throughout the project and will be carried out both on a formal and informal level and in the form of self and peer assessment. Evaluation will involve all project actors: National agencies, school principals, coordinators from each school, students, teachers, school staff and parents.

Dissemination of the project:
– At the local level the project will be disseminated through the media: radio and newspapers with publications in local newspapers and radio broadcasts. The creation of a website and a facebook page will enable increase the spread of the project.
– At regional level it will be disseminated through meetings with Educational Authorities, Provincial Directorate, Universities of each country, Cultural Associations, Social Centers.
– At European level it will be disseminated through the e-Twinning portal with the publication of the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 30520 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège des Ylangs-Ylangs & Country: FR

Project Partners

• EDUCESA SL