The climate conference that took place in Paris had to the aim to encourage people’s/countries/ actors of the civic society in general, to cooperate as well as to take initiatives in order to maintain a healthy environment, with a direct focus on water, climate changes and resilience. From this reason we strongly believe that all the objectives that we set for our partnership are entirely justified in the international context, in which all the partners from the participating countries can share ideas and can mutually instill in students a responsible and sustainable behavior towards the environment. The newest objective of the United Nations United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 6 refers to ‘clean, accessible water for all’. Our partnership’s teaching/training activities along with the mentioned outcomes will set a standard for the very important Goal and our purpose is to attain the High-Level Panel. We want to prove how schools and also local communities from all over Europe can take initiative to promote Goal 6. As providers of education, we, the teachers, cannot be careless about the endangered future that water has, we have to take serious action in preserving the water resources for the future generations. We believe that a very influential way to do this and act proactively is by creating the very meaningful educational project which will work as the program that will educate students for the both the short and long run about its strategic and crucial role in life. In this respect, the purpose of our partnership is to create an integrative and also a multidisciplinary, hands-on, explicit teaching approach that will be achieved and complemented only by the help of all our project partners who will contribute with the skills, experience and expertise they have in different fields of educational areas. The partnership’s basic priority unfolds around the basic priority of multiple teachers from different countries working together in order to generate a methodological publication of ‘Good practices’. The methodological publication will in fact be a well-designed and well tied together program that will focus on promoting and stimulating interdisciplinary education, for students aged between 15-18 years old. The program will be designed to help students become aware of the importance that water has in supporting life on earth in general and human life in particular. But of a vital importance nowadays is also to make the young generations-starting with our students, realize how important it is to develop, maintain and promote a responsible behavior of water consumption. A high priority is to make students understand how vulnerable the water sources are, how quickly the quantity of this natural re-sources is diminishing, and also to work collaboratively to find ways that will ensure a sustainable water management. Additionally the students will also understand how important it is to work collaboratively as in the context of our multinational project, to find solutions for a common, universal, international issue that generates and maintains life on earth-water; as this water, is our mutual, international source of life as rivers or any other water base are very often crossing the borders of a country into another, and so they are administered and controlled by different countries. But even so, what cannot apprehend frontiers or different political treaties. During this partnership we want to approach the issue of ‘water’, seen as a vital natural ingredient for life, from different perspectives, by the help of different school subjects. By doing this we want to raise the alarm and to develop awareness of the necessity of responsible and sustainable environmental behavior among learners of all ages. The project will also offer the students the opportunity to get a real and tangible experience that will later help them with a greater comprehension of sciences, which in other respects might seem too abstract and theoretical for them. The envisaged objectives are: O1. to raise students’, teachers’ and also local community members’ awareness on the current issue of the endangered natural global resource-water, the vital source of life on earth O2. to increase knowledge related to sustainable consumption and environmental protection among the students and also the local communities O3. to create an open educational base/resource - Teaching Materials O4. to develop students’ transversal and cross-sectoral skills as well as their versatility and to effectively assist them to become well-rounded young graduates, prepared for successful future career O5. to enhance the potential of both teachers and students to improve their ICT, language and intercultural skills; O6. to boost students’ interest for school, educational activities and to assist them to become more active O7. to promote European values and to develop intercultural understanding and cohesion among citizens of Europe.
Make Water Great Again was aimed to be a two-year project but it was prolonged for a year due to COVID-19. It brough together schools from Denmark, Turkey, Spain, Italy and Romania. We all have amble and natural access to water, due to our geographic locations across Europe and firmly believe that water, climate change, and resilience are all vital to maintaining a healthy environment. Besides the actual act of working hands-on with all aspects of preserving watersupplies we also implemented digital media and webtools in teaching and learning activities. The schools supported the European Commission's initiative and local environmental institutions' goals to raise awareness of the scarcity of water, as well as the precautions that need to be taken to safeguard it. All partners had bar one had extensive experience in planning and executing international projects and during the program, students and teachers learned together and from each other; they also gained competences and expertise from local professionals. The partnership was developed around two main pillars: waterpreservation and sustainability of health and well-being. Our project participants (students aged 13-19, staff, parents and wider community) learnt about local and regional environmental efforts done to preserve water and used ICT to elaborate products. The teams collaborated on topics like which role water have on local communities regarding agriculture, industry, fishing activity and tourism. Furthermore, we looked into the prospects of maintaining watersupplies in the future and which measures are already in place to sustain and purify already existing reservoires. Participants who took part in national and international learning/training activities, like workshops, took their knowledge and competences back home and were able to impart it to their own school communities. Should Covid-19 not have thrown a spanner in the works, the students would have served as mentors to their peers and younger learners from other educational institutions. Throughout the project, participating teachers gathered many ideas on the use of ICT technologies and the implementation of digital media and online tools in product manufacturing and distribution. During our collaboration, we have created a vibrant, engaging, modern and professional learning environment at the school. It attracts teachers who are innovative and encourages them to integrate effective practice and creative teaching methods into their daily practice. Our schools envisioned connecting with other cultures by promoting understanding and learning about different cultures. They also planned to build bridges between different countries by teaching adolescents about water/life balance. We believe that by educating adolescents about waterprotection, the world will become more aware of the measures we have to take. Working on projects that involve other countries gives projects greater impact. This is because participants have new opportunities to communicate with people they normally don't interact with. This also gives them the opportunity to share and compare knowledge and skills with people from different countries. On launching the project and over its course our secondary objectives were to secure a professional development of staff, exchange of materials on waterpreservation, support of young teachers, especially those unexperienced in international cooperation and project management. Cooperatively we developed final products such as dictionaries on water-related phrases, national lessonplans on the topic and a Waterprotection Charter. Further outcomes were hard to achieve due to Covid-19 lockdowns and the following rush of meetings in the final extended part of the project making it virtually impossible to prepare materials and local workshops of an adequate standard compared to the hitherto impeccable level of expectation outlined before everything came tumbling down. Through out the lifespan of the project the objectives remained the same: O1. to raise students’, teachers’ and also local community members’ awareness on the current issue of the endangered natural global resource-water, the vital source of life on earth O2. to increase knowledge related to sustainable consumption and environmental protection among the students and also the local communities O3. to create an open educational base/resource - Teaching Materials O4. to develop students’ transversal and cross-sectoral skills as well as their versatility and to effectively assist them to become well-rounded young graduates, prepared for successful future career O5. to enhance the potential of both teachers and students to improve their ICT, language and intercultural skills; O6. to boost students’ interest for school, educational activities and to assist them to become more active O7. to promote European values and to develop intercultural understanding and cohesion among citizens of Europe.