Climate change is a subject that worries many young people today. They can feel helpless in thinking of strategies to combat it. Out of habit, the average citizen produces sky-high emissions, directly contributing to climate change. We leave our lights on, we toss out tons of wasted food and we hardly recycle. The focus of this project is to raise awareness of local environmental issues and enable the challenge and change of our lifestyle decisions in order to meet the required UN targets agreed at the Paris climate talks in Paris 2015. The project should have a long term sustainable impact on the thoughts or actions of the communities involved. "Raise awareness, change habits" is a project indicating that we not only want to raise awareness of environmental issues but also aim to change our environmentally harmful behaviour. To do this, we use the expertise of the partners, bring students together from different countries and initiate joint research. Our project sees as an important task, to make environmental education in our schools holistic, understandable and sustainable. We would like to contribute to the improved communication of environmental education in the partner schools and at European level. This project is student-centred, as they research on a topic, develop presentations and campaigns and train the partner schools, classmates and teachers. In this project, students should be motivated to challenge themselves to become knowledgeable recipients. The aim is to give the students the opportunity to develop commitment and participation in shaping their future and protecting our environment. The implementation of concrete, authentic environmental actions as part of the learning process about campaigns brings a crucial sustainability factor for their own learning. The students will collaborate with other students, thereby improving their language skills, intercultural knowledge, knowledge about local environmental issues and social skills. By working with schools from Spain, Sweden, and Italy, we think of discovering a variety of perspectives on the subject, involving a variety of materials and creating an atmosphere of team spirit and mutual inspiration. The project will involve students, teachers, school leaders and stakeholders from regional politics and business. Each school will work on a subtopic. The results will be passed on to the partner schools in the project. With the exception of one school being bilingual, the remaining three partner schools are international schools, and they have comparable curricula and similar school structures. In the four planned student exchanges, the students will actively collaborate and work together in the STEAM area to develop environmental campaigns. We believe that today’s world requires a creative approach to problem-solving. STEM + Arts = STEAM. Due to the widespread social networks, students access today, they are already familiar with a variety of campaigns. However, we want to teach them a step-by-step on how to build a campaign as well as how to successfully implement and use it to reach out to the public and change behaviour. The students will work in mixed groups on a local environmental burning topic. In Spain, action will be taken in cleaning beaches from non-biodegradable rubbish. The students will then create works of art from their collected garbage. In Italy, students will work on a reforestation project and produce tree protection covers through plastic recycled by the school. In Sweden, students will investigate the eating habits and the influence on an individual's CO2 balance. Finally, in Germany, the topic is air pollution, the use of innovative and environmentally friendly public transport and how this contributes to the sustainable protection of the environment. All campaigns and evaluation data will be published on the project website. Further, the students will create a handout on how to set up a successful environmental campaign.
Climate change continues to be an issue among students. This awareness was further heightened by the pandemic: feelings of helplessness and frustration were clearly evident. Firstly, from the impact that the pandemic had on bringing social life to a standstill, and secondly, from the lack of opportunities to take action together as a group in the real world. With the pandemic subsiding, mobility was not yet possible, but the students from Spain and Sweden were able to become active on the ground in their respective countries. The respective beaches were cleaned, garbage was collected and this was recycled. The planned goals, namely - to give the students the opportunity to develop commitment and participation in shaping their future and protecting our environment - improve their language skills, intercultural knowledge, knowledge of local environmental issues, and social skills; and - collaborate in the STEAM field, - as well as teach them step by step how to set up a campaign, how to implement it successfully and how to use it to reach the public and bring about behavioral change were able to be partially implemented despite limited opportunities and the lockdown. First, the teacher coordinator meeting was held in October 2019. As a result, the short-term exchange of student groups from Sweden, Italy, Spain and Germany took place in Stuttgart. Here the students learned how to build a campaign step by step, how to implement it successfully and how to use it to reach the public and bring about behavior change. All campaigns had the goal of reducing CO2 consumption and thus reducing not only their own but also that of the school communities. To this end, campaigns on the topics of "car sharing", "CO2 reduction through planting" and "switching from car to e-bike" were designed and awarded prizes. In the course of this, the participants were able to choose which campaign they wanted to work on in order to continue to work on it in the future in the respective schools. In Stuttgart, the bicycle parking spaces were expanded and e-bike charging stations were included in the planning of the new building. The students also achieved that there are options for teachers to lease e-bikes (-> to develop commitment and involvement in shaping their future and protecting our environment). In the second step, a Zoom meeting was convened by Italy on 19/05/2021 to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the theme "How the pandemic affects our sustainability goals", the groups discussed virtually and recorded results on this in the form of further posters. Due to the situation, these posters were created using digital media and shared. Thus, even over long distances, the project could continue to be realized and both social skills (group work / group discussion) and multilingualism (especially English, Spanish) could be expanded. The third meeting in March 2022 (16.03-19.03.2022) took place again virtually, since a journey to Spain was not possible by the regulars of the schools. In the follow-up to this meeting, Italy dropped out of the project. In order to not complicate the project, on-site clean-ups were carried out in the individual countries (Spain, Sweden, Germany), which could then be discussed digitally at the same time. What was remarkable here was that the participants were able to determine that the amount of trash in the countries and cleanup areas was very different: The German forest was far less polluted than the tourist beach in Spain. The Zero Food Waste activity (23.5.-25.5.22) also took place virtually. Due to the pandemic, however, cuts had to be made in the STEAM area: The students have worked across subjects and schools but networks in the STEAM area have not been created. Nevertheless, the students have been sensitized in the field of science / biology for the biotopes and their conservation. In addition to the concretely implemented goals, a close contact between the students has developed, which initially had to resort to the use of virtual media due to the pandemic. As a long-term effect, the intensive use of various virtual platforms has been internalized, as the participants not only had to maintain contact, but also had to record and share plans, results and ideas. As a consequence, they find it easier to use virtual media and would like to have further links to the students in order to continue sharing new ideas related to sustainability, recycling and conservation of the respective biotopes. Another long-term effect of the project concerns the implementation of various new projects at the International School Stuttgart: In the learning program "Service as Action", the preservation of the biotopes has been incorporated alongside other >cleaning actions of the immediate surroundings and will be carried out regularly in the future. In addition, the reduction of the carbon footprint has been advanced by providing more bicycle parking spaces as well as e-bike leasing for teachers.