One, Two, Tree! Plant and Let it Grow Erasmus Project

Project Title

One, Two, Tree! Plant and Let it Grow

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: Creativity and culture; Energy and resources; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

Project Summary

One, Two, Tree! Plant and Let It Grow

We are living in 2020 in a context in which environmental issues are becoming more and more pregnant. The students this project is addressing have to deal with a fast-paced changing world. Adapting to this changing world is a real challenge for individuals and societies. Europe has always been a continent shaped by exchanges. Maintaining the unity of the continent within a same political and economic frame is an absolute necessity for the development of a European citizenship bearing at heart a sustainable environment for every citizen to live in peace. During the last few years, in Europe as elsewhere, a global awareness of the seriousness of the situation concerning the impact of our way of lives on the nature that feeds us has become obvious. Pollution is multifaceted. It has to be reduced.
Trees are growing according to seasons, as we do age as years go by. We refer to photos to see our own changes. We read how a tree has grown according to its yearly transformation as we count and observe the several layers of its growth on a trunk. Each country will be implied in a tree-planting operation with local species in order to acknowledge the essential role of trees in our lives. Traditions and craftsmanship will be mixed with the use of new technologies to produce wooden objects related to the restaurant or the kitchen.
A project about trees is also about sharing. Trees can communicate between themselves thanks to the help of an invisible network of mushrooms in the ground. We humans are interconnected in today’s world thanks to the speed of digital technologies. We would be well advised to care more about trees and consider what they give us. Shelter, shadow, colour, shape, landscapes, biotopes …they slowly grow just as we do but their lifespan is longer than ours. They give us wood for the fire and fruit for the palate. They give us food for thougths. Writers and poets love trees.
The project encompasses this ecological issue by dealing with wood or wood-related objects instead of disposable plastic. The project deals with the diversity of trees that grow everywhere in Europe according to climate differences and specificities. The project implies gastronomy and table decoration as means to enhance the beauty of nature and in particular wood from several distinctive areas. The project targets students in gastronomy, catering and tourism in particular as one of its main objectives is to work on vocational skills. As a matter of fact, five European schools have decided to work together to share experiences for a two-year programme focused on the use of wood in tableware and of trees bearing fruit in gastronomy. Each country has its particular story and relation to wood because such a material has been part of every day life in every culture.
Letting a tree grow, it is being confident about the future. Its symbolic meaning is a way to give hope to the youngest generations. Letting a tree grow, it is also a metaphor for a life-long learning process. Our students will benefit from this Erasmus+ project but the outcome of such a project will flourish once they reach adulthood. The students are in a cycle that will help them gain in autonomy, in responsibility and they will become aware of the value of their vocational skills. This is one aspect of the project of the uttermost importance: giving each student the tool kit to build up a vocational future in a complex world.
Four out of five participating countries have a catering section with cooks and waiters. The fifth partner, Italy, has a tourism section. Therefore, the project addresses students in vocational schools in the fields of gastronomy, service, tourism and commerce. These vocational sectors are linked on each territory as tourism is often developing in places that have a huge potential. Each school is willing to welcome an international gathering of students and teachers. This means that the planned calendar schedules five destination countries. Each foreign delegation will travel four times to meet other partner countries and each school will welcome the international delegations once. Each visit will consist in a week-long encounter with planned activities including school visits, ice-breaking activities, the discovery of nearby places worth visiting related to the theme, conferences and round tables with professionals, international workshops, the practice of vocational skills, either at school or in a real-life context, cultural visits and the discovery of local gastronomy, with an emphasis put on tree-related produces.
In the long-term will be built up an international network that should be able to live on as years go by, making it easier for students and adults to get connected. The results also include the impact of such a project on each school, underlining the dynamism of each team and shaping each school’s image with an international scope. Trees and students will grow with the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 164931 Eur

Project Coordinator

LYCEE PROFESSIONNEL JEAN GUEHENNO & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Sukromna Spojena skola EDUCO
• Srednja sola Izola – Scuola media Isola
• ITET “G. Tomasi di Lampedusa”
• Oswald-von-Nell-Breuning-Berufskolleg