Living Environment – sustainable life in European regions Erasmus Project

Project Title

Living Environment – sustainable life in European regions

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Creativity and culture; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The project “Living Environment” focuses on sustainable life in different European regions. We increase the students’ awareness on sustainability and develop their ability to see the connection between ecological, cultural and social environment. Moreover, the students will study the connection between good, sustainable life and the environment.
We consider it most important to help the students to see the environment as a source for welfare and wellbeing. When we are aware of the connection between sustainable, good life and our immediate surroundings, we can create more sustainable conditions in the future.
The pedagogical practice we develop aims to avoid ignorance and indifference and instead, aims to strengthen one’s own life skills and responsibility. According to the statistics, there is a strong resemblance between students’ social background and life choices, and increasing level of stress among youth. Therefore, we encourage different age groups and students with different backgrounds to participate the project and to develop their skills.
The objectives:
1) Increasing awareness on the idea of sustainability (Agenda 2030, nationals curriculas), and tools for students to affect on their own sustainable life. Moreover, our goal is that the students understand the connection between environment and social, cultural practices, and that they understand differences and similarities inside Europe.
2) Pedagogical model that supports the idea of sustainability: learning by doing, multidisciplinary studies, student centerness (workshops supporting students own initiatives and skills) and mentoring. Our objective is to offer students ways to study together and learn from each other’s viewpoints. The students, who participate the LTT activities come from different national and social background. At the same time, different age groups meet each other. In this sense, the objective is to support social cohesion.
In this project, multidisciplinary means that we combine e.g. creativity to the ideas of research work. Therefore, the workshops apply the methods of different school subjects and multiple ways of studying.
3) Practical ways to disseminate the project. We produce an eBook, Digital Storytelling. It consists of pictures, audio, video and texts (such as storytelling) and can be published in various medias and applied as educational material.
Participants and activities:
This is done by organising five LTT activities for students, in which they do workshop in international, multidisciplinary groups, and a teachers’ meeting for the dissemination process. The involved schools and their topics are:
Hatanpää upper secondary school, Finland: Sounds, stories and space
Ventspils 4. vidusskola, Latvia: Personality development in nature
Gymnasium Carolinum, Germany: Life with inland lakes
Liceo Peano Pellico, Italy: Human geography in a cultural environment
Hatanpää comprehensive school, Finland: Forests as source for sustainable society and well-being
The partnership bases on the previous contacts and projects, but also on willingness to invite new members in order to apply mentoring among teachers.
The schools involved provide different profiles and offer variations of pedagogical experiences, and the activities support each participant school to show their strengths and to adapt new methods.
In this project we have four different areas from Finland, Latvia, Germany and Italy – that is from lakes, forests, seaside to mountains and river valleys. To be able to compare and see the perspectives, to understand ”us”, we need to see ”the others”: for this reason, we need to get to know different environments and communities. It means, we have a strong need to work in international groups.
All LTT activities consist of three elements: pretasks, meeting and editing the product (Digital Storytelling). Each meeting will add something new to the nuclear idea of living environment, and the students get familiar with different styles of sustainability. The workshops are instructed and guided by teachers and professionals, who provide new viewpoint and methods on the topic: from drama and sound analysis to the scientific research and outdoor activities. Our way of reporting is Storytelling by various means.
The pedagogical model and the product (Digital Storytelling) is easy to apply also after the project in our own schools, and to disseminate to wider educational circles via meetings, conferences and social media. By emphasising the students’ role in learning, the pedagogical objectives of students’ responsibility towards environment and towards one’s own life and other people’s life will be reached.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 153691 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hatanpään lukio & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Liceo Peano-Pellico
• Ventspils 4.vidusskola
• Gymnasium Carolinum
• Hatanpään koulu