Green and healthy schools across Europe (GREHES) describes the mutual mission statement of five vocational/secondary schools from different EU countries – namely Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Great Britain. Pointing out the current health conditions in and around schools in relation to global sustainability goals (SDGs) and culture specific parameters, each project partner identified the need to help adjust the mindset and institutional conditions for a healthier lifestyle for students in Europe. This project brings together young people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, who are about to enter the European workforce. The school environment has great impact on their future ability to encounter national and international challenges. Hence, it is very important to prepare the students for an overall healthy lifestyle in respect to social, mental and physical health as well as professional readiness within the intercultural context of Europe. In the course of the GREHES project, each participating school will introduce ideas, measures and facilities promoting a more healthy, sustainable and responsible school environment. Topics will include (1) Social Awareness (i.e. learn & work conditions, school & job etiquette) (2) Mental wellbeing (i.e. stress prevention) (3) Physical health (i.e. extra curricular exercice, nutrition) (4) Fair Trade (i.e. green produce, - focus on school canteen) Through interactive workshops and cross-border learning, core groups of students and teachers of each project partner will compare, evaluate and enhance existing concepts. They will analyse all relevant aspects of their current school environment, learn about best practice examples of respective schools, local instituions and businesses, find out about the criteria of fair trade products and ways of including them into their daily needs as well as expand their individual range of physical excercise and balanced diet. Based upon their results, all participants shall develop new ideas and methods for improvements tailored to their communities. Adjusting and integrating successful concepts, facilities and ideas into the development of new concepts for each partaking school will be an important result of the GREHES project. A special focus in this context is the provision and promotion of healthy nutrition at each school. Developing methods to cope with stress situations in order to increase psychological resilience is also among the targeted results as well as promoting ways to make each member of the school community feel welcome and integrated. Naturally, the enhancement of intercultural skills and language skills are expected. Each participating school will carry out the content in various learning teams and in interaction with their respective school community . Throughout the duration of the project, small student & teacher delegations (5 students + 2 accompanying teachers from each school) will meet in participating countries to complement national activities with first hand international experience. Collaboration with local institutions outside the school communities will be an integral part of the students learning. In order to create a sustaining impact, the groups of students will - together with the partaking teachers - present specific suggestions to the school community and its social environment. Ideally, this project will lead to a wide range in change of awareness of individuals for a healthy lifestyle and also to lasting relationships between project partners and/or participating institutions. Long term school partnerships are anticipated to allow further student exchanges and advanced teacher training. According to the findings of participating groups of students, adjustments to the individual school programs and curriculars shall be made to achieve sustainable impact and ultimately a healthier lifestyle for students and teachers in Europe.
The GREHES – Project met our aspiration to contribute to the sustainability of our european places of learning despite all adverse circumstances. The partaking schools from Germany, Norway, England, Denmark as well as the cooperating school from the Netherlands and all teachers involved agree that this form of cooperation needs to be continued in order to develop and sustain the sustainable project objectives. The comparison of the partaking schools and school communities as well as the involvement of regional companies in the EU-territory resulted in many impulses which made the objective of a healthy and school more specific. Next to the presentations of successful events at the partaking schools the project also profited from different external impulses, which focused on improving the well-being of the individual, regardless if student, teacher, social worker or administrative employee. Some of these impulses are listed below: - installing of fitness-equipment and play equipment such as table football tables and table-tennis tables - entire fitness-rooms, which can be used by school staff - written requests and invitations to use the staircases instead of the elevator - relaxation rooms for students and staff which are ideally equipped with VR-glasses with relaxing sequences - the introduction of “active breaks”, physical exercises within lessons - seminars for vocal training, resilience including “laughing seminars” - daily knowledge sharing of ideas promoting motivation, fitness and mental strength Especially the last impulse pursued intensively in cooperation with the institute of teacher’s health in Bremen. The original idea was to create an app, but unfortunately this first attempt failed because of the limitations regarding technical and financial means. The development of such an app has the potential to be picked up again in a follow-up project. Almost all project participants wanted the topic of strengthening mental health to be a focus of this EU-project. Laura Jordaan, as an expert in this field, succeeded to provide valuable input regarding this topic during the first mobility in Münster. This happened again online at the restart at 21 April 2021. After the problem analysis, the following suggestions were applied an refined: - stress management through muscle – and breathing exercises - practicing emotional regulation - embedding mindfulness into daily routines at school and at the workplace - implementing recreational breaks despite manifold tasks during the day - owning and accepting As a conclusion, after tackling the issue of mental health during this project, participants wished to continue their work on this topic. This happened, for example, in Kristiansand, when Norwegian nurses delivered a keynote speech about their work at school, in which they focused on mental health issues such as depression or bulimia. Nutritional behaviour and its consequences has already been a topic which was dealt with during the whole duration of the project. This started with learning about the balanced nutrition on offer in the school canteens of the cooperating ROC Twente or at York College, and it went on with realizing the necessity to take into account the supply chains and to use fair-traded products in schools and training workplaces. This resulted with the implementation of fair-trade delegates in the school communities. In addition to that, students have realized to increase waste prevention at the European partner schools. To begin with, they have initiated specific actions like abolishing paper cups including plastic lids. These isolated solutions were partially extended with regional solutions. Especially the mobility in Denmark, in which the recycling centre, a second- hand shop and the corporate group IFF was visited, strengthened the awareness of waste prevention in the context of a healthy school. Furthermore, all participants gained knowledge about the essential importance of a well-balanced social togetherness in regard to integration and inclusion. The discussion after the reception in the “Chamber of Peace” in Münster has led to recognition that - ideally - social peace is only to be gained in peaceful times. Discussions in English, the language of the projects, but also the communication during the content work and the cultural framework program, enhanced the language skills and also the social skills cross-nationally. Therefore, all participating teachers agreed on a content-related follow-up project. This project should be concluded with a health day. Accordingly, a work group has already been installed, which also has the task to plan a sponsoring run in order to support social campaigns and - besides - improve health and fitness.