To live and work in a sustainable way in Europe

Our goal with this project was to create an increased awareness of sustainable consumption within entrepreneurship from a global perspective. The focus was on sustainable consumption of clothing, electronics and food. By increasing knowledge among young people, we can educate prospective entrepreneurs who are environmentally aware and who work for a sustainable society. This project aimed to complement our needs in education, especially in communication through digital technology, intercultural issues and international entrepreneurial skills with focus on sustainable consumption. We saw an educational need to develop students' international relations so that they could learn more about sustainable global trade and therefore become more attractive in the international labor market. It was our common goal to let students from both schools develop skills that are needed in their future professional life. As far as work with digital development is concerned, the pandemic has had a major positive effect. The students communicated digitally to a significantly greater extent than expected. When we switched to distance learning, the German school was inspired by the Swedish one and acquired digital equipment, which also contributed to the development of the project. One of the project meetings (April 2022) was conducted entirely digitally for a few days. The students worked in their own country on the topic food consumption and then met digitally to report and compare their results. This way of working greatly contributed to an intercultural perspective. All results have been published on our joint website. What has also become clear to our students is the opportunity for entrepreneurship when it comes to recycling and reuse. Many examples have been examined of commercial success in this industry, not only in their own country but also globally. Both schools work closely with companies but have yet to develop an international relation to widen their entrepreneurship in a global world.We also saw that our schools complement each other in terms of different relations with companies and how we work with international entrepreneurial skills. We can state that awareness increased among our students. They organized second-hand bazaars, visited second-hand shops, but also various companies that professionally recycle and reuse,mainly clothes and electronics. The students worked all the time in mixed groups and were therefore able to compare the development and attitude of the two countries, which led to increased awareness. Prejudices about each country's approach to sustainability have been discussed. The project was aimed for a timespan of 24 months. In this timespan both schools should visit the other school twice with a group of ten students and three teachers. During these visits, the focus should be on study visits, where we should seek cooperation between students and industries in Sweden and Germany with focus on sustainable consumption such as sustainable consumption of clothing, electronics and food. Here, however, it did not work as planned. Due to the pandemic, we could neither invite the lecturers that were planned nor go on all study visits to companies. However, some study visits were made, such as visits to companies that deal with recycling. The project was granted an extension to 36 months, but when the pandemic returned, we were still forced to limit study visits and travel. As mentioned above, one of the exchanges was carried out digitally. In order to have the opportunity to finish the project with, among other things, evaluation and a look into the future, we held a meeting in Berlin right at the end of the project period, where both groups gathered and worked in mixed groups. During the time that we could not work effectively with the project, we had digital teacher meetings to maintain contact and jointly find alternative solutions. There were some difficulties when the schools were closed, but not at the same time. Then it was difficult to reach all the students. Another important goal for the visit was the deepen the students' knowledge of intercultural issues, both inside and outside entrepreneurship. In between these visits, we would also deepen our contact through digital technology. Here students would complete tasks and prepare their forthcoming visits by communicating digitally with the other school. The project was then continually reported on a common web page. The digital part of the project has worked completely according to plan. With this project we aimed to develop our own international network but first and foremost students gained awareness of sustainable consumption within entrepreneurship from a global perspective, and also competence in digital technology and intercultural issues. This will benefit them in their future professional life but also as an enlightened citizen in a sustainable world. https://sites.google.com/vaxjo.se/a-sustainable-europe/home?authuser=0