Through this Erasmus+ project, we want to promote the acquisition and development of the skills of students and of the educational teams by offering them a framework different from the traditional educational framework and which will also be conducive to interdisciplinary works and to the approach of project. Participating in this partnership will be a motivating factor for students who do not always feel interested in learning in an open and innovative environment, promoting their autonomy and their sense of learning while responding to a form of anxiety over their future and the futur of the planet. This project will also promote team work, interdisciplinarity and the international opening of the institutions. We are four institutions from four countries, France, the Czech Republic, Spain and the Netherlands, that have come together on a common theme "Water, A Common Good to Preserve". While being in different contexts with different points of view, we want our students to work on the same issue : Water management in Europe, a 21st century challenge. Two classes per school (students aged 12 to 16) will be directly involved in the project, but a maximum of students and teachers and staff from the institutions will be involved. Each partner country is responsible for a water-related theme : The Netherlands "Preserve and manage excess of water", France "Water and climate change", Czech Republic "Water and pollution" , Spain "Access to quality water". The activities will focus on these four main themes, each of which being the subject of mobility in the partner country, during which 11 or 12 students from each country will meet and be accompanied by 2 to 3 supervisors. Students will work upstream mobility on the issue of the meeting, which will inform them, make them acquire knowledge and make them aware of the issues. During each mobility the following point will be planned: - A presentation and a visit of the host institution. - The enunciation of the problem in the local and national context. - A presentation of the work done upstream by the students from the different countries. - Debates where students will be put in a position to argue, so that they can become aware of the issues of water management but also the place they have in these issues as future European citizens, that they can appreciate the complexity of the problems, the difficulty of reaching a consensus. This will lead to the development of critical thinking. - Visits, meetings on the theme. - Final tasks that will reinvest the assets and lead to productions that will be brought back to the institutions and / or proposals to submit to the local bodies of institutions and local communities. Downstream from mobility, partners will continue to work on the theme. Exchanges will be done upstream, downstream and during the mobilities via a twinspace. To allow maximum dissemination, various events will be organized such as exhibitions, "Eco-responsibility" days, "Erasmus Day", and dissemination via the websites of the institutions. Through the approach to the theme of water and the topics discussed, the objective will be to train future European citizens responsible in their choice with regard to water management and strength of proposal. Questionnaires, evaluation grids will be produced to evaluate the benefits of the project and mobilities. Specific indicators will be defined to measure results and impacts on students, teachers and other supervisors as well as on schools. Participating in an international project on water management, an European or even global issue, moving from the local to the European scale will make it possible to become truly eco-responsible citizens and actors in relation to the environment in a context of global climate change. Through its partnership and country-specific issues, this project will also open schools to Europe. The project work and the international activities will lead to a change in the postures of the students and the teachers, which will allow to develop the basic skills of each of them and the quality of the lessons. The students will become enriched and curious citizens, open to Europe and to the other cultures.They will help to make students future citizens enriched, curious, open to Europe, to other cultures. Thus, they’ll be able to project themselves beyond academic deadlines, making a transfer of learning from school to life. They will give meaning to learning including languages and stimulate the development of other European-wide partnership projects in schools.
During this project, the students acquired knowledge and developed their skills. The new activities concerning environment, different from the traditional education, was motivating for the students (especially for those who were not very interested in school-based learning). The criteria we followed to choose the participants were: economic and social environment, equality between the number of girls and boys, interest in learning, special educational needs. Students learned about environmental innovation, water scarcity and pollution. They have progressed in autonomy, have gained confidence and have developed their European awareness. The important thing was also to improve the level of communication in a foreign language, in Spanish and English. The students often worked in transnational teams and offered ideas to solve environmental problems and gave their visions for the future of our planet. They evaluated each mobility in a very positive way, regularly made reports, they exchanged a lot on social networks like Instagram, Facebook... Some reports fed the websites of schools. Students still keep in touch with international friends. We did all the mobilities and visited all the countries and establishments where we had to go: France, the Czech Republic, Spain and the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the Netherlands did not join us for the last 3 mobilities. We had a common theme: "Water, a common good to be preserved". We worked on the same issue: water management in Europe, a challenge of the 21st century. The age of the pupils was 12-17 years old and the participants in the mobilities were around 12 pupils per mobility and 2-3 teachers per establishment. Each country was responsible for a theme related to water: Netherlands "Preserving and managing excess water", France "Water and climate change", Czech Republic "Water and pollution", Spain "Access to clean water quality". All the schools organized the activities for which they were responsible. Before each mobility, the school sent work to prepare the students for the visit. During each mobility, a presentation of the host institution was made. Then, activities concerning the project were organized during which the students were placed in a situation of reflection. They had to argue, experiment, … in order to become aware of the difficulties related to water management. This led to the development of critical thinking. In addition, they visited new places related to the subject and thus enriched their knowledge, broadened their vision of Europe. The final tasks and results were reported back to the institutions. Some of them will be introduced to local authorities. Before the mobility in the Netherlands, we created and used a Twinspace space for communication between the students because they wanted to know their host family. Very quickly the children began to communicate with each other via different social networks. Due to COVID-19, students could no longer be accommodated with families and Twinspace was no longer used. After finishing the project, exhibitions, Erasmus wall were made. Next year the partner schools will organize "Eco-responsibility" days, participate in "Erasmus Day" and present these actions via the establishments' websites. French students would like to propose the results of this project to the COP27 for young people: a program that allows students to simulate an international conference where each country must defend its ecological choices. Participation in an international project on water management has enabled our students to feel eco-responsible in relation to the environment in a context of global climate change. Thanks to this partnership, the students have opened up to Europe. The work of the international project led to a change in the postures of pupils and teachers, which made it possible to develop the basic skills of each. Students have become “enriched” citizens, more open to Europe. We had to face a difficult situation, the COVID-19. This disrupted our programs. There have also been effects on budgets, with children not being allowed to stay with families. We had to request an extension of our program for one more year. Then the war in Ukraine started and it caused a huge increase in travel costs. We therefore decided to prefer a more ecological way of traveling: we used a bus for our last trip to France. We did our best to follow and achieve all the activities and expectations that we had planned before that.