An extremely vital element for all forms of life in our planet is water. Unfortunately everyone admits that in coming decades we will face a difficult period because of water quality and quantity issues. Drinking water supplies has started to decrease, while the demand for clean water is increasing. Even the governments recognise this unpleasant fact. That has lead to strict decisions at the Climate Change Conference in Paris last December. In the climate agenda it is stated clearly that the climate change affects the ability of people to maintain a sustainable development . Likewise, water management affects every aspect of development, for example food, economic development, security ecosystem services health and biodiversity. The water pollution and the climate change were in the centre of the attention in the Paris Conference with the aim to boost the initiatives and the cooperation , between two or more countries and within different civil society authorities. The goal of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development 6 is "clean, accessible water for all". The educational activities and the results, are supposed to set a high standard for this essential goal. We want to show how academic organizations across Europe in cooperation with the local communities can promote Aim 6. As educators we feel the necessity to do something about the future of water, to face the problem thanks to future generations. The best way to take action is to develop a meaningful educational project that raises students’ awareness about the strategic role of water in life. The educational practices and approaches should be innovative, differentiated and as modern as we believe that the traditional classroom methods perhaps not suffice for such an important topic. Therefore our purpose is to develop a multidisciplinary approach to teaching, which can be achieved through discovering the various aspects of the subject that our partners can supply according to their unique expertise. The priority of the project is to bring the methodological basis of ‘good practices’ with the educational staff of the pedagogical team of the project. We aim to develop a methodological model that helps us to create an interdisciplinary educational project for students, aged 15-18 from secondary education. Through the program pupils will become aware of the role of water resources and will understand how much water is related with every aspect of life. Moreover it is of the essence for students to recognize the vulnerability of water basins and the shortage of clean water resources in some countries as well as the necessity to come up with appropriate ways of water management aiming to sustainability. In addition, pupils will realize the importance of working in multinational programs, as water bases are managed and used by more than one country. Water does not stop on borders or does not change their route because of political treaties. Therefore approaching this essential element of life from several perspectives the educational subjects involved in this project are expected to become a tangible experience that will enable students to understand disciplines that otherwise might look too theoretical to grasp. This multinational application is brought to life with a very clear vision of seeing teachers’ skills enriched. The participating teachers are expected to become better educators, since they will be able to share with others methods, knowledge, tools and practices from their expertise. The educational disciplines that we intend to develop are water management studies, language skills, history language teaching, geography, environmental studies chemistry biology, economics, and maths.
The main aim of the project was to study the use of water in different countries and make students aware of the importance of addressing issues related to water usage. To develop teacher skills in order to help them teach many different angles on water in a modern and engaging way. NUMBER AND PROFILE OF THE PARTICIPANTS Students/teenagers: Each exchange involved the participation of six students per country who participated directly in the exchanges. The students were selected prior to each mobility, according to transparent criteria, involving the command of English, ICT skills, interest in STEAM subjects, social economic background and motivation. Teachers/Adults: A team who managed the project implementation was set up in each partner organisation. Each of them was assigned clear tasks from the beginning ranging from linguistic to technical fields to make sure to achieve the main aims of the project. According to the importance and relevance of their contribution two participating teachers were selected from this team before each activity. MAIN ACTIVITIES Due to the delay in the start of the project, the timing in some activities was changed, agreed by the partners at the 1st meeting. The calendar changes of activities did not affect the achievement of the overall goals and results of the project. During the exchanges, students were attending classes in subjects related to the project, where they worked towards achieving specific goals in each activity. C1-SP The first meeting was supposed to take place in Turkey, the Turkish partner withdrew, and we changed location to Spain. This meeting under the subtopic of “Raising water awareness in schools” was a Joint Staff Training Event where three teachers from each partner school participated to get acquainted and discuss the content of the project, as well as to agree how to arrange and change management details for further activities, because of the delayed start and withdrawal of Turkish partner. C2-DK The project teams joined workshops about the subtopic “Water as means of communication” - we met local experts, local authorities, NGO’s and politicians who presented different knowledge about water in a regional context. Students presented in English about the subtopic in their country and made small quizzes. The final product was creating the Water Protection Charta and updating their e-travel book and creating posts on social media platforms. C3-PT The activities under the subtopic “Water as a lifeline for humanity” where focusing on the topics - water as a source for life and water as means of survival, where students presented about the topic in their local context. They attended workshops with local experts on these topics. The final product was updating their e-travel book and posting their achievements in the meeting on social platforms. C4-GR Under the subtopic “Water as a fountain of life” students presented about the socio-economic impact of water in local contexts. They attended workshops to learn about the effect of water in a local/regional context. Students updated e-travel book and social media. C5/C6-SP Final subtopic “First we need clean water” was affected by COVID-19 and instead of physical meeting C5 we did it virtually C6 where all students met on TEAMS, details described in the following sections. Students presented about the subtopic, and we had virtual workshops with different tasks related to our main theme and subtopic, and presentations from an NGO. METHODOLOGY We divided our main topic into several subtopics which constitute the theme of each meeting and exchange envisaged in the project. During LTTA’s students were at the center of activities, as we believed that by involving them directly and supervising their work, the project will have a stronger impact on them. RESULTS AND IMPACTS We have assumed the publication of intermediate products which were results from the activities performed during the exchanges will be made available to larger audiences on the project website, through all the dissemination activities included in the dissemination plan. We therefore still hope that there will be a positive, measurable impact at the level of participants (with a clear increasing awareness of the problems related to sustainable water management among the target group members), of local school communities and wider communities, in NGO’s, at the level of the institutions involved and other related institutions, at local, regional, national, and international levels. Each partner school have already involved the project topics in their curriculum, they are already included in English lessons, STEAM lessons and other lessons, this way the project results will continue to be important many years to come. We intend to promote a sustainable plan involving implementation of the project results for other schools within the three years following the end of the project in order to let these communities also develop benefits from our project.