Protect Ecosystem and Life Erasmus Project

Project Title

Protect Ecosystem and Life

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: Pedagogy and didactics; Natural sciences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The Planet has been sending us signals for a while.The impact of global warming has become one of the major EU’s concerns as recent studies/research and reports ( see Lencet, 2019) underline its negative effects on people of all ages,both at physical and psychological level.Moreover, they report the fact that during puberty,the negative effects advance cumulatively throughout lifetime and according to Unicef’s report (2012,p.5) there are about 670 million children living in areas that frequently face floods or severe droughts.The buzzwords of this century are:sustainability,unfair sharing and conscious citizenship.It is the 16-year-old Greta who first urged adults and mostly important-students-on the issue as a result of a lack of reaction up to that moment.At the same time she wants politicians to give the appropriate attention/care to the topic and handle it as top of their priority list,as a crisis situation.What we are all experiencing right now is nothing but the result of the total ignorance of the society concerning environment.From Greta’s speech we have developed some potential outcomes and after-effects.
Although we don’t like to recognize it,all the educational systems in Europe raise children that are not part of the solution,who are more likely to become angry, insensitive future grown-ups and lack coherent contents on environment as part of the curriculum.More than ever,we,as educators,have the responsibility to take together the first steps,to become with our students the change we want to see in the world.Italy has announced that topics on climate change will become compulsory parts of the national curriculum,all the interdisciplinary teachers consider that these new education plans should be reflected upon based on personal experience and knowledge and inserted into the curricula.
Under these circumstances,schools from six European countries ( Turkey,Portugal,Romania,Estonia,Greece,Czech Republic) have decided to join hands in playing an active role in the effort of finding solutions.The main aims while fighting the climate change are:implementing and application of themes into the curriculum,raising climate change and environmental awareness by using different teaching-learning methods,taking individuals out of the virtual platform and support them to become part of cooperation groups,encourage them to look into the topic,to assume responsibility in social projects,to establish awareness cooperation projects with non-governmental organizations,become more and more aware of the problems and bring suggestions as solutions,recognize the needs of professional fields and being able to notice changes,support the teachers during their work and provide the needed materials,assistance through mental health protective pedagogical knowledge,try to cope with depression,self-concern of children due to climate change and its consequences.
The target groups are made up of children aged 10/14 as we consider that mentally it is the age when they are more open to change,prejudices aren’t permanent and behavior change is more successful according to research while education models are applied.According to the results collected after we have applied the questionnaires,children have a general understanding of the phenomenon, they express worries and concerns about it.The number of the students involved at partnership level is about 1056,but we intend to extend the activities and increase the number.Nobody is excluded and everyone’s involvement will be welcome.
All the activities are carefully chosen in order to help us achieve the project aims as initially planned and will be permanently adjusted to the students’ needs and taking into account the data collected through feedback.Most of them will be caught in a syllabus on climate change,environmental issues,consumption habits.The activities will be interdisciplinary and cover most of the school subjects within a wide variety of teaching/learning methods and techniques.As the content of the application illustrates,the 6 methodologies represent the equal contribution of all the partners and have been set after a serious debate trying to cover all the issues .The selected approaches are expected to fully meet the project aims as each school will provide support based on its strongest features.
The project intends to produce intellectual outputs that may be used/transferred to different educational domains.Probably the most important results,apart from social,cultural togetherness,world citizenship,enhancement of language skills and higher institution value,visibility is the desired behavior and the awareness of our future citizens.We have set up our eTwinning,a platform that all the partners use and will also add the target groups to Twinspace.The word will be spread in activities with great impact:marches,symposiums,exhibitions,debates and the sustainability will be ensured through communitary actions on environment that will involve everybody around.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 178780 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladni skola Zamberk, 28.rijna 581 & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• 2nd Gymnasium of Nafpaktos
• Scoala Gimnaziala Coresi
• Ege Universitesi Guclendirme Vakfi Okullari Ozel Narlidere Ortaokulu
• Polva Kool
• Agrupamento de escolas de Alvide