Many resources of our Planet Earth are not equally shared. This is being globally discussed, facing the fact that the growth of the world population will bring our planet to its limits. At the same time there is an affluence and waste of resources in many European countries, and global problems are not really taken serious. On the other hand many European countries are patterns in many fields for the whole world regarding sustainability. But we do not make use of our full potential, the strength and experience of EU states to enhance sustainability - despite the fact that our agricultural Common Market is so well interwoven. The project “European food sustainability vs. food waste” will involve students and teachers from 5 different countries and backgrounds (Germany, Italy, France, Poland, and Spain) in an effort to discover and learn about the resources, components and habits related to food and consumerism while they are analysing and working with their own culture and the culture of their partner schools. All the staff in our schools, the parents, the local/regional Cultural Associations and the local authorities will be invited to take part in the activities proposed in our project. We intend to develop positive attitudes, develop a habits and respect towards healthy food and consumers' education contrasting and gaining awareness on the differences and similarities, analysing results with people from other cultures and to promote the concept of European citizenship through intercultural dialogue on health and social issues. We intend to help our students to grow a sense of belonging, not only in their own society and culture, but also in a bigger social community – Europe. In addition, we aim to improve the foreign language skills of students and teachers through CLIL methodology, the use of ICT at school as a way of communicating with other partners and a mutual understanding on strategies for the inclusion of all pupils. Our pupils will share many activities with their European partners through the eTwinning platform and in the meetings and learning activities. They will learn about different cultures, habits, foods and dishes and lifestyles. All these activities will be included in our school curriculum. They will also discover the importance of learning a foreign language to communicate with others in a real context through enjoyable activities. Teachers will discover a European dimension to education and they will learn about teaching strategies in different countries as a way of improving their practice. The main goal of our project is to give our students a good chance of widening their cultural horizons, to increase their sense of belonging to a wider community and to teach them to work collaboratively towards specific topics, fostering consciousness as citizens of Europe. Therefore, this partnership with European schools will enable us to add excitement to the teaching of culture, traditions, foreign languages and to motivate the students in their learning when they are given the chance to compare different educational systems and methodologies and the opportunity to participate in the daily life of some European schools.
The project “European food sustainability vs. food waste” involved students and teachers from five different countries and backgrounds (Germany, Italy, France, Poland, and Spain) in an effort to discover and learn about the resources, components and habits related to food and consumption habits while they were analyzing and working with their own culture and the culture of their partner schools. All the staff in our schools, parents, local/regional cultural associations and local authorities were invited to take part in the activities proposed by our project. Here are the results: After visiting the Gundlach and Oetker companies as well as a package-free shop during our learning activity in Bielefeld (Germany), we developed seven criteria for “super packaging”. Packages should be reusable, recyclable, organic, pleasing to the eye, protective, light and easy to transport. The focus of this next step was on consuming local food instead of food being imported from all over the world. By this, costs can be reduced, there will be less pollution and climate change can be slowed down. The students developed ideas to raise awareness of “green food” in their family, at school and in their city. The focuses of the second learning activity in Hirson (France) were aspects of healthy food and healthy eating habits. The students developed strategies and ideas for school and everyday life, such as - limiting the consumption of products containing “hidden” sugar - having appropriate lunch times to avoid having snacks - introducing longer breaks at school - protecting people of “aggressive advertisements” for snacks, fast food and sweets - eating less, local and healthy - getting more physical exercise - taking one’s time to cook and eat. The main thesis of the next step towards our “European Super Mail” was that half of the world’s food production is thrown away. The European laws however require that companies/supermarkets are obliged to sell their products before the expiry date or to throw them away though they can still be consumed. By changing the laws one could reduce the waste of food by approximately 30%. Finally, the students developed criteria to avoid food waste and came up with advice for people in Europe to shop more sustainably. In order to keep food fresh longer and keep it from spoiling, we should check what we really need, shop more frequently but in smaller quantities, store food appropriately, use leftovers efficiently, share them with others or freeze them. The final results were published online in an e-book written by participating teachers and students to ensure that our ideas will be spread throughout Europe. The e-book has already been presented at the European Department of Agriculture in Brussels. It can be viewed and downloaded amongst other resources at the project’s website http://our-european-super-meal.de/. All in all, we intended to develop positive attitudes/habits and respect towards healthy food and add to the consumers' education by contrasting and gaining awareness of the differences and similarities. We also analyzed results with people from other cultures and tried to promote the concept of European citizenship through intercultural dialogue on health and social issues. We intended to help our students to grow a sense of belonging, not only to their own society and culture, but also to a larger social community – Europe. The main goal apart from content was to teach our pupils to work collaboratively regarding specific topics across Europe and as a result to forge their identity as citizens of Europe. Moreover, this partnership with European schools enabled us to motivate the students in their learning when they were given the opportunities to compare different educational systems and methodologies and to participate in the daily life of some European schools.