The term "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) was used at the UN conference on environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It describes education that empowers people, to design the future actively in a globalized world autonomously and responsibly. The aim is to encourage young people's understanding of the complex relationships between globalization, economic development, consumption, environmental pollution, population development, health and social conditions in the classroom. Secondly, there is the "framework for the teaching of Global Development Education", which can be used as a basis for curriculum development, because it offers concrete recommendations and material for teaching. The here presented project is based on those two initiatives.Thus, three schools, Instituut Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vreugde of Roeselare, the Campus Efeuweg from Berlin-Neukölln and Notre Dame de Mongré in Mongré agreed to actively contribute to the environmental and sustainable development of their school life. Together, we have set ourselves the goal to develop guidelines that will change our school programs with regard to sustainability and therefore also specialize our school curriculums in the long term. We want to increase the willingness to sustainability of our school communities, reduce our consumption of resources and create offers that are based on health standards. Each school provides a project group of about 25 students, and according to democratic principles the coordination of teachers creates the learning environment of the project. Our partnership is special because two private Catholic schools cooperate with a school with mostly (87%) Muslim pupils. So there will be in addition to scientific aspects a lot more to learn from each other. Learning from each other is a central point of the project, because the school Mongré provides climate experts, or eco class speakers supporting the climate detectives at the other schools. Our project "Time for more sustainability" follows the methodological approach of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). ESD consists of three steps: identify (information gathering), rate (seeing options of individual action and identifying solutions) act (consciously reflect own and foreign orientations for life choices). Gathering information will happen to prepare the three exchange meetings. The three project groups in the institutions gather knowledge about climate, climate change, climate policy, nutrients and active ingredients, foods and nutritional groups, as well as garbage collection, recycling, disposal systems and the impact of waste on the environment. The individual working and teaching material will be developed in German and French. It will be available on the homepages of the individual schools and e-Twinning. The students explore as climate detectives their schools in preparation of the exchange meetings using therefore mathematic skills in order to reflect their own contribution to pollution and the resource consumption of their school. These experiences are the basis for various forms of presentation such as the group puzzle, ball bearings, PowerPoint presentations etc. which will happen at the annual project meetings. During project meetings students will search for solutions for the detected problems of their schools problems (unhealthy school lunch, poor waste management, high energy consumption). Their aim is to develop solutions and applications for school parliaments to raise awareness of sustainable development and to improve school life. As another result, the students create various exhibitions, which are brought together at the end of the project meetings. So an exhibition on sustainability projects will be developed in individual countries, as well as methods and ideas of waste separation and disposal and healthy eating. Partial products or results include a garbage memory that helps to learn waste separation. This can be used later in refugee camps or in primary schools. Another product is the herb spiral and the compost heap in Berlin, which will be maintained by the primary school students. Further results will be planned by the students at the 1st project meeting, when the option of participating in the European Sustainability Week 2017 will be discussed. Other products such as books, Photo Stories and You-Tube clips "How to make your planet a better place" will be presented at e-twinning, the school´s homepages, on Youtube and a common drop box. At the end of the project, jointly developed guidelines will be firmly anchored in the school programs being signed by all people in school.
The term "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) was used at the UN conference on environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It describes education that empowers people, to design the future actively in a globalized world autonomously and responsibly. The aim of our project "It is time for more sustainability" was to encourage our student´s understanding of the complex relationships between globalization, economic development, consumption, environmental pollution, population development, health and social conditions in the classroom. We used the "framework for the teaching of Global Development Education", as a basis for curriculum development, because it offered concrete recommendations and material for teaching. Thus, three schools, Instituut Onze Lieve Vrouw van Vreugde of Roeselare, the Campus Efeuweg from Berlin-Neukölln and Notre Dame de Mongré in Mongré agreed to actively contribute to the environmental and sustainable development of their school life. Together, we reached the goal to develop guidelines that changed our school programmes with regard to sustainability and therefore we also specialized our school curriculums in the long term. We increased the willingness to sustainability of our school communities, reduced our consumption of resources and created offers that are based on health and ecological standards. Therefore we increased offers for the school community. We made sustainable weeks and projects, we implemented new school gardens and repair cafes, we met local groups which dealt with sustainability in the region, we met political members of local parliaments and informed us or debated about sustainability in the region. We did expert interviews and had a lot of workshops to learn about topics like climate change, healthy nutrition, plastic problems and so on. Each school provided a project group of about 25 students, and according to democratic principles the coordination of teachers and students created the learning environment of the project. During the project more than 800 students and 25 teachers were part of the different projects phases. Our partnership is special because two private Catholic schools cooperated with a school with mostly (87%) Muslim pupils who were also socially handicapped. The project showed that people with the same aim can learn a lot from each other, crossing social and intercultural borders becoming more competent with regard to democracy, intercultural values and life, language and social skills. Learning from each other is a central point of the project, because the school Mongré provided climate experts, or eco class speakers supporting the climate detectives at the other schools. Our project "Time for more sustainability" followed the methodological approach of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). ESD consists of three steps: identify (information gathering), rate (seeing options of individual action and identifying solutions) act (consciously reflect own and foreign orientations for life choices). Gathering information happened to prepare the three exchange meetings. The three project groups in the institutions gathered knowledge about climate, climate change, climate policy, food and nutrition, as well as garbage collection, recycling, disposal systems and the impact of waste on the environment. The students explored as climate detectives their schools in preparation of the exchange meetings using therefore mathematic skills in order to reflect their own contribution to pollution and the resource consumption of their school. They implemented competitions and exchanged their findings about the different sustainability topics. They met different people in their region to learn from and participated in different workshops to become experts themselves. These experiences were the basis for various forms of presentation such as the speed dating, ball bearings, PowerPoint or video presentations etc. which were shown at the annual project meetings. During project meetings students searched for solutions for the detected problems of their school´s problems (unhealthy school lunch, poor waste management, high energy consumption). They developed solutions and applications for school parliaments and raised awareness of sustainable development and therefor improved school life. As another result, the students created various exhibitions on recycling, ecological economics, sustainable living etc. which were shown to the public at the end of the project meetings. Other products such as You-Tube clips "How to make your planet a better place", posters, reports, videos, powerpoints, photos are presented at e-twinning, the school´s homepages, and on Youtube. At the end of the project our schools will still profit in the future because of the new firm offers in our schools like sustainability weeks or the congress of Neukölln or different workshop offers. Furthermore we will stay in contact with us and also the new local partners we found.