Sustainability Empowered by Young Europeans Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sustainability Empowered by Young Europeans

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: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Access for disadvantaged; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The idea to launch the project Sustainability Empowered by Young Europeans is originated in the fact that many young people living in Europe are not aware of their potential of being able to actively influence European developments.
Especially adolescents and young adults who come from socially, financially, culturally and educationally deprived backgrounds often lack the opportunity to raise their voice in an international context and thus have fewer chances on the labour market.
Due to this the project’s objectives are to provide deprived students with the knowledge and the chance to influence the development of Europe by working on a project that will have an impact on their private lives as well as on a local, national and international basis.
The topic of sustainability is omnipresent; many European nations are constantly working on improving and developing tactics to, for example, lessen climatic changes, preventing youth unemployment, providing a sufficient amount of living space by new building strategies, enabling access to fresh water supply, creating more awareness of the aspect of gender equality, preserving natural habitats etc.
Our project aims at working on, presenting and exchanging good practice examples with regard to the EU Sustainable Development Goals 2030 amongst all participating partners to get to know different strategies of how to enable sustainable living and how to implement these methods into daily lessons at school.
All partners, students as well as teachers, contributed successfully to the development of working material for good practice examples and prepare presentations on their topic. Presentations and workshops took place during international meetings at the prevailing institution. In between those meetings, all participants worked on tasks to prepare the workshops and on the UN sustainability goals, giving feedback and evaluating the good practice examples. Methods used in the project are: digital storytelling, cooperative learning techniques according to Green, panel discussions, problem-based learning, portfolios, scientific methods (theory-experiment-verification), entrepreneurial skills training, methods for giving constructive feedback and monitoring activities.

The following activities took part as planned:

During the Kickoff meeting in Greece, which was attended by two teachers/ organisators per school, all participants agreed on the exact dates on which the workshops should take place. The group also worked on a questionnaire as a means of evalution for students as well as teacher who would take part in a workshop.
The next meeting was the first workshiop which took place in Germany. Every activity mentioned in the draft for the project took place as inteded to. Students and teachers worked in international groups and got an incling of how former industrial sites were transformed into recreational areas and are used to generate green energy.
In Spain all participants worked in international teams on how to dispose of material left over from mechanical workshops, they gained practical as well as theoretical experience through research, discussions and presentations of experts. The aspect of sustainability was thus also shown while visiting a local company, which showed what they do and how to dispose of leftovers and collect fluids that occur during production. During a discussion with the town mayor participants had the opportunity to discuss how the UN goals are implemented in the area. The focus lay on active participation and discussion of the topic and working in international teams.
The third international workshop was held in Greece. There the focus was on examples of clean energy, especially by using photovoltaic systems, wind and water power. Again, the cooperation in international teams and the interculutural exchange did take place as planned before.
After this mobility the next one was organised to be in Scotland. Here everybody dealt with the topic of planning and designing a future business that uses sustainable methods to reduce the company’s costs.
The last workshop took part in Denmark. The main aspect of the activities there was managing the local water supply in a sustainable way.

The activities mentioned in the following did not take part as originally planned.

Although the workshop in Greece dealt with all the contents that it should have been dealing with and all participants worked in international teams, there was one aspect that had not been planned. The Scottish partner was not able to attend the workshop due to a exam phase at their school. This problem was solved by providingany material that has been worked on via eTwinning and by staying in contact via email.
The final meeting between teachers with the intetntion to evaluate the whole project, to sum it up, discuss it and to prepare all the material for the teaching portfolio did also not take part as intended. Due to the Corona-Pandemic some heads of school did not want their staff to travel to Germany. As the problem of Covid 19 grew worse, everybody agreed via email to have a Skype meeting instead. Before it could take place, every partner got a permission for this change from their National Agency. Unfortunately the meeting via Skype turned out to be a problem as well. The connection was interrupted very often and the technology iteself was malfunctioning. Due to that the coordinator send an email with all details needed and material that was already prepared for this meeting to every participant. On the basis of the replies the coordinator created the planned outcome of the project, the teaching portfolio.

Expectations:

As all vocational schools teach in different fields of work each of them was expected to concentrate on different aspects concerning the EU Sustainable Development Goals 2030.
The results of the exchanges of good practice examples, as well as feedback and reports were supposed to shown and worked on via eTwinning.
The participating institutions also had to share reports and results on their webpages and amongst all colleagues who were supposed to teach the topic of sustainability. The project team wanted to design a webpage and to upload the material and concepts for other teachers to use in the classroom.
With the project the team hoped to have a positive impact on the lives of deprived students so they will have better chances on the national and international labour market by giving them the chance to work on an omnipresent topic in an international context and thus enabling them to contribute to the development of Europe. We (as teachers) also would have liked to witness different methods of teaching the subject of sustainability to broaden our individual and each school’s pool of methods and be able to cover the 17 sustainability goals in class through working in an international environment with schools having different expertise.

Realisation:

As already mentioned above the workshops and their contents were realised mostly as they were planned. Due to the teaching portfolio and the exchange of material via email and eTwinning as well as actively taking part in the workshops all teachers had the chnace to witness different approaches of dealing with the project’s topic. Students who travelled to the different countries will stand better chances on the national and international labour market since they got an official certificate about having been actively involved in an international cooperation of schools and the necessity to communicate in the English language. Everybody, having anttended a workshop abroad or having dealt with sustainability in class, profited from the project due to the fact that they had to understand and to speak the English language. Students also worked actively on the project’s topic, for example in order to prepare or evaluate workshops.
Although eTwinning has been used a lot to upload pictures, workshop material and filled in questionnaires it was not used as much as intended by students to communicate with each other after the workshops. Teachers mostly had to remind students to use this means of communication at home.
The planned webpage for the project could also not be finished in time and is still in progress since the schools were closed for a while bevause of Covid 19 and thus students were not able to work on it at school. The coordinator hopes to provide the webpage by the end of August.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 99981,92 Eur

Project Coordinator

Berufskolleg für Technik und Gestaltung & Country: DE

Project Partners

• 2nd Vocational Lyceum of Larissa
• Fundacion Instituto Técnico Industrial
• Asmildkloster Landbrugsskole
• West Lothian College