The main motivation for the project is without doubt the possibility of meeting and getting to know students and teachers from other countries in Europe. Intercultural competence is more important than ever. We need to break down cultural barriers and build awareness of cultural norms, to create people who have a tolerance for ambiguity and who can keep an open mind. But in order to have a project funded you also need a great project idea – and this we think we have found – sustainable living. The common core subjects in the LK06 Norwegian national curriculum will by 2020 be equipped with new core elements, and one of these will be sustainability. Sustainability can only be achieved through a collaboration between countries – it can never be seen as something isolated or something relevant for only one country. The objectives we would like to achieve and the concrete results we would like to produce can be summarized in the title of the project: “Sustainable Living – Active Citizens”. We would like the participants of the project to get knowledge of what sustainability is and in that way be able to live more sustainable lives, and we want them to get knowledge of what it entails to be an active citizen and by that become active citizens in their local communities. By looking at what you can do in your local environment to achieve sustainability, we hope the participants will be capable of making informed decisions that can help change the way they live their lives. Altogether, we are six partners, including Norway. These are Adam-Josef-Cüppers-Berufskolleg from Germany, Secondary Municipal School Taki Daskalo Bitola from Macedonia, OGEC Ensemble scolaire JEANNE D'ARC + SAINT JOSEPH from France, Muhoksen lukio from Finland, IISS Francesco De Sanctis Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi from Italy and Trysil videregaaende skole from Norway. A needs analysis helped us form this partnership consisting of countries which, on some level, had already implemented sustainability in their curricula, were in the process of implementing it, or who in other ways had integrated sustainability in their teaching or would like to do so. They all give different reasons for why being part of an Erasmus+ project like this is important. Both in France, Finland, Macedonia and Germany the topic of sustainability is already a part of the lessons, but what they need is to exchange ideas and help their students put into practice what are being taught in school. In Italy sustainability is not part of the national curriculum, nevertheless sustainable living has been put on the agenda by increased pollution levels, and they therefore see the need for their students to see what goes on in other countries, be influenced by this, and get the motivation to change things at home. In Norway sustainability will soon be part of the curriculum, but already it is a much used concept in many companies and institutions - the challenge is to convice the general public to make sustainability friendly choices. We have included a wide range of activities in the project. Before each LTT activity we have planned collaborative online activities where the students first do some sort of research in the homes or local communities before they compare results with partners from the other schools online. During the LTT activities we mainly focus on getting a grasp of what sustainability is, by looking into the different pillars it is made up of: Sustainability and Environmental Development’, ‘Sustainability and Social Development’, Sustainability and Cultural Development’ and ‘Sustainability and Economic Development’. After each LTT activity we focus on evaluation and dissemination. What we hope to achieve is awareness of what sustainability is and what you as an individual can do to contribute to making your local community more sustainable. Sustainability is not just something you should read about – you should be able to live it.
The main motivation for the project has undoubtly been the possibility of meeting and getting to know students and teachers from other countries in Europe. Intercultural competence is more important than ever. We need to break down cultural barriers and build awareness of cultural norms, to create people who have a tolerance for ambiguity and who can keep an open mind. Our idea was to link this with sustainable living. During the last years sustainability has been included in many of the curruculas in the countries cooperating in this project. Our starting point was that sustainability can only be achieved through a collaboration between countries – it can never be seen as something isolated or something relevant for only one country. The objectives we believe that we have achieved and the concrete results we have produced can be summarized in the title of the project: “Sustainable Living – Active Citizens”. Both students and teachers have got knowledge of what sustainability is and in that way they are now able to live more sustainable lives, and they have got knowledge of what it entails to be an active citizen and by that become active citizens in their local communities. We have looked at what you can do in your local environment to achieve sustainability, and we believe the participants now will be capable of making informed decisions that can help change the way they live their lives. Altogether, we have been six partners, including Norway. These are Adam-Josef-Cüppers-Berufskolleg from Germany, Secondary Municipal School Taki Daskalo Bitola from Macedonia, OGEC Ensemble scolaire JEANNE D'ARC + SAINT JOSEPH from France, Muhoksen lukio from Finland, IISS Francesco De Sanctis Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi from Italy and Trysil videregaaende skole from Norway. A needs analysis helped us form this partnership consisting of countries which, on some level, had already implemented sustainability in their curricula, were in the process of implementing it, or who in other ways had integrated sustainability in their teaching or would like to do so. They all gave different reasons for why being part of an Erasmus+ project like this is important. Both in France, Finland, Macedonia and Germany the topic of sustainability was already a part of the lessons when the project started, but what they needed was to exchange ideas and help their students put into practice what are being taught in school. In Italy sustainability was not part of the national curriculum, nevertheless sustainable living has been put on the agenda by increased pollution levels, and they therefore saw the need for their students to see what goes on in other countries, be influenced by this, and get the motivation to change things at home. In Norway sustainability has become part of the curriculum during the implementation of this project. In all countries, our cooperation has made it clear for the students how important this topic is. We have included a wide range of activities in the project. Before each LTT activity we have carried out collaborative online activities where the students first did some sort of research in the homes or local communities before they compared results with partners from the other schools online. During the LTT activities we mainly focused on getting a grasp of what sustainability is, by looking into the different pillars it is made up of: Sustainability and Environmental Development’, ‘Sustainability and Social Development’, Sustainability and Cultural Development’ and ‘Sustainability and Economic Development’. After each LTT activity we have focused on evaluation and dissemination. We believe that we have achieved awareness of what sustainability is and what you as an individual can do to contribute to making your local community more sustainable. Sustainability is not just something you should read about – you should be able to live it. Due to the pandemic, we unfortunately had to cancel the last LLT activity in Norway. This did not influence the objectives and results too much since we had already worked on all the pillars of sustainability, but we were not able to sum up and look at sustainability as a whole in the same way as we had planned. Since the last LTT also was supposed to contain a final conference, this fact to some degree reduced the dissemination of the project. It was difficult to carry out a compensation for this conference since people were not able to meet and we all had to cope with distance teaching, but we did implement some smaller online projects.