Reporter Exchange Augmented Production (REAP) for sustainable development

Project summary

The Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) seeks to generate and scale-up concrete actions in Education for Sustainable Development. In September 2015, many world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - a set of 17 aspirational goals to be achieved by the year 2030 - which addresses shared challenges at the global and local levels. The 2030 Agenda includes a specific goal on climate action (Goal 13) and formally recognizes that the climate crisis is linked to many other global issues. In addition, Goal 13 on climate action and Goal 4 on quality education both recognise the importance of Education for Sustainable Development and the role of education in responding to climate change. Our main objective is that our pupils grasp the environmental issues the world faces and understand the necessity and the scope of sustainable development for the future of their planet. To do so, we decided to participate in "Young Reporters for the Environment". To participate, the students in each school will choose one subject among all the environmental issues and make a short movie about it. Those movies will be uploaded on weblogs and shared among the partner schools. Then, we will create common movies between groups of French and Swedish pupils, so that they can share their ideas and discuss solutions. Our secondary objective is to improve the students' foreign language skills, increase their sense of initiative, their intercultural awareness, their motivation to take part in future education or training and, in the long run, expend their employability and career prospects. To fulfill those objectives, in Autumn 2017, 20 French pupils will travel to Sweden and meet with 20 Swedish pupils from the Swedish applicant organization. They will discover the local biodiversity through outings to ecosystems. They will also be able to observe the local and global Swedish context of nature preservation, energy sourcing and conservation, waste disposal etc... The following Spring, the reverse trip with similar activities will occur and the French pupils will invite the Swedish, which means that a total of 40 youth will participate, with 4 adults to help with the organization and safety. During this two-way trip, the students will make common video projects to address the global warming and environmental issues and these videos will be used to participate in the "Young Reporters for the Environment" contest. The preparation and organization will be held in collaboration between both countries through video-conference meetings and social networks. The participants from the French area come from isolated agricultural areas and most of them come from below average income families with few traveling opportunities outside this project. The participants from the Swedish area come from average and below average income families. In both cases it is an extraordinary opportunity to face another culture and create a common project. As for the expected results and impacts, we expect the participants to improve their knowledge of biodiversity and its fragility in relation to global warming. We also hope for their understanding of the need to protect the environment and switch to sustainable development. In addition, we foresee an improvement of their foreign language skills, their self-esteem and self empowerment. We expect their awareness of European culture and European values to flourish, as well as their will to be more active in society, particularly in the fight against global warming. This project and its repercussions will probably motivate the young to carry on with their studies in order to better their employability and their career prospects, especially in the fields developed in our exchange but not exclusively. As for the repercussions on our schools are concerned, we hope to increase our attractiveness toward the local population, to increase motivation among all our pupils, to prevent them from droping-out and increase their learning skills. The longer term expected benefits of this project would be to help both our areas to feel less isolated which would give people, and especially young people, a better chance to be more mobile and a better employability. Through this project we hope to create a real collaboration between the French and Swedish schools and to refine our teaching methods. We also wish to broaden the scope of the pupils' vision of their place in Europe and of the power they have to change their world. Through the dissemination of our results, mainly the films made by the pupils, we will then involve the other non-travelling students from our schools and organise different events to show and discuss the movies with pupils, parents, and local politicians.