The "Water day 2019 & Earth Day 2020” project will involve six schools in five different countries: Evariste Galois High School in Sartrouville, France; Touchard-Washington High School in Le Mans in France; Pomorska Skola Maritime School in Split, Croatia; Gheorge Tattarescu Arts High School in Focsani, Roumania; Matías Ramón Martínez secondary and vocational school in Burguillos, Spain; and the Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa polytechnic school in Partinico, Italy. We will organise seven exchanges during the 24 months of the project: two in the coordinating school in Sartrouville, and one in each of the participating schools. 140 students, aged 12 to 18, will take part in these exchanges. We will select students who are open-minded, with communicative skills in English and other foreign languages, and are determined to engage regularly with the activities of the project. And for some of these students who are facing financial, social or learning difficulties, the project will be a great opportunity to explore the world around them and develop skills. By having the opportunity to discover other cultures, the students will realise their common points and differences. Thus, their collaborative work will awaken in them a spirit of citizenship and a European consciousness. These are two crucial values for these future 21st-century adults. We want our students to master critical skills such as communication, responsibility, flexibility, cooperation, collaboration and teamwork, independence and initiative, creativity, courtesy, open-mindedness, adaptation to different cultures, tolerance and use of ICT. We want our students to become responsible citizens who know their country, the European Union, and the world. We chose the universal topics of Water and Earth to raise awareness about significant issues we face in the 21st century. These represent new challenges in education. By realising that water is a precious and scarce resource, our students will learn how to become active in preserving the Earth, in line with the 17 UN objectives on sustainable development. The students will discover that Water and Earth are also a source of artistic and literary inspiration, through different ages and countries. We will offer a multi-subject approach that will enable the students to develop their creativity and increase their general, scientific, literary and artistic culture. Throughout the project, the students will participate in activities and create various productions, expanding the scope of their knowledge and skills. The students will create a website, social media pages, a magazine and newsletters. They will conduct in-field research, scientific experiments and analyses. They will produce creative works like models of monuments, and attend artistic and creative workshops... At the end of each school year, their collaborative work will culminate in a big cultural event, as each of the six schools will organise Water Day in 2019 and Earth Day in 2020. On these Days, the productions that students created during exchanges, and also the works of all the students of the six schools, will be displayed, thus making everyone benefit from the international scope of this project. Earth Day will be the fifth Day organised by Evariste Galois High School. The first one was Mediterranean Day in 2016, only in Sartrouville. During Earth Day, the students will see how a local event, reproduced at the same time in different countries, becomes an international event, consistent with the rationale of Earth Day. They will feel like citizens of Europe and of the world. Their considerations on issues as important as Water or Earth will take their full meaning during this event, which will be the climax of 24 months of collaboration. The innovative approach of our project aims to fight against school dropout by giving all students the opportunity to express their potential and talents, to reinforce links among students, teachers and schools, improve the atmosphere within the schools, as well as their influence and reputation outwith. Beyond this project, the Days will continue to take place with a sixth edition in 2021. And very likely, with more new partners.
The Erasmus+ KA229 project Water Day 2019 and Earth Day 2020 brought together, over 30 months, 6 schools in 5 European countries: France, Spain, Croatia, Romania, Italy. In the continuity of the "Journées d'Evariste" - thematic days organised since 2016 at the end of the year by the coordinating high school and its sector colleges - the 6 partner schools cooperated around the organisation of the Water Day, during the 1st year of the project, then the Earth Day, during the 2nd year of the project (even if this last Day could not take place because of the sanitary crisis). 5 physical mobilities took place, as well as one virtual mobility. In total, just over 100 students and 50 teachers and staff participated in the physical mobilities; 35 students and 15 teachers in the virtual mobility; about 300 local participants, all mobilities combined. More pupils should have participated in the physical mobilities, as the last two were cancelled due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Our project included as many pupils with difficulties or fewer opportunities as possible. The universal themes selected, Water and Earth, have made it possible to make our pupils aware of the major issues of the 21st century, which are new challenges for education. By becoming aware that water is a precious and endangered resource, our students have begun to become actors in the protection of our Earth, thus inscribing our project in the 17 sustainable development objectives of the United Nations. The environmental and ecological theme was therefore at the heart of our project, however a multidisciplinary approach was proposed, so that the pupils also discovered water and earth as sources of artistic inspiration. In this way, the pupils were able to develop their ecological and civic awareness, but also to increase their general, scientific, literary and artistic culture and to work on their creativity. The activities planned between mobilities were very varied: publication of newsletters and 4 issues of the project magazine; work on different films (feature films and reports) on ecology, environment, water and earth (screenings, debates, writing articles...). ); production of models; drawing and tree photo competitions; solidarity and planet protection actions, such as sorting and recycling workshops, cleaning of streets, beaches, national parks, cork collection, tree planting activity... At the end of the first year of the project, the Water Day, organised during the same week in each establishment, allowed to highlight all these productions and achievements. On the same principle, Earth Day, finally cancelled, should have brought together all the partners in May 2020. All these non-mobility activities made it possible to include many pupils, not all of whom had the opportunity to take part in a mobility. The mobility programmes were particularly rich and varied. Participants discovered the culture, heritage and traditions of the host region or country, as well as the education system. They visited cities, monuments, museums, often in the form of treasure hunts organised by the host institution. They discovered landscapes and explored natural areas. Ecological, scientific or artistic workshops, organised around water or land, were led by students, teachers or external speakers. The participants developed a number of skills through the Water Day & Earth Day project: cultural, social, linguistic, digital, artistic, communication and teamwork skills. They understood the importance of preserving our planet, especially since the health crisis which has made our project more necessary today than ever. They have met and got to know young people from other European countries, made friends, confronted differences, which has enriched them and made them more open and tolerant. They also learned the value of commitment, a sense of responsibility, and the need to see a project through to completion despite the circumstances and obstacles, because it is with teamwork that we were able to overcome the difficulties to see the project through to completion. In the longer term, lasting links have been forged between teachers, pupils and schools, consolidating and strengthening the European and international openness of each of the partners. All our productions, all our results have been shared on a public TwinSpace, on the project's social networks (Facebook and Instagram), on the sites of the partner schools, as well as on the European platform of Erasmus+ results.