Climate change represents one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Schools play a substantial role in the education of tomorrow’s adults and decision makers. For this reason we created this 2-year Erasmus+ KA229 project that involves six European preprimary and primary schools from different countries: Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain. This international contact between the schools will create opportunities to build bridges between the different countries and cultures, creating friendships and exchanging best practices, experiences and ideas in order to empower children to be more active, positive and responsible with our planet. The objectives of the project are to make the participants aware about the problems of the climate change, to empower them to be more active, positive and responsible with our planet, to make everybody understand that small deeds make a big difference. Additional aims of the project are to increase understanding for other people in different countries and cultures, to develop a European identity, to strengthen the use of English and the awareness of other languages, to develop key competences as well as basic and digital skills. The project will focus on six themes as challenges for the pupils: energy, waste, air pollution, preserving nature, biodiversity and water. The challenges will be introduced to the pupils by the mascot of the project, the teddy bear called Jan. He travels virtually through Europe. In addition to the six challenges, he will give eight other assignments for the pupils. Working in the project, the pupils will develop a responsible view and lifestyle to maintain and build a beautiful and unique Earth. Every partner school will be responsible for organizing a challenge of a theme for all the partner schools. Each challenge raises awareness, makes the pupils work together with their peers from the other countries and take action in order to contribute reducing pollution and waste, to recycle, to save energy and water, preserve nature and help to protect biodiversity. The pupils will work on the challenges and assignments in their every day school life by looking for information on the themes, designing a logo for the project, making a song, two drama plays, a board game (a real one and a digital one), a journal, PP-presentations, photos and videos of the activities, drawings, animations, posters, artworks, poems, exhibitions etc. The schools will also make field trips studying on the themes and invite experts to visit the school. An info corner will be arranged by each school to present the works and other information. The results of the activities will be uploaded as fact files to the eTwinning project. During the project there will be two short-term learning events for the pupils. A short-term joint staff training event will be arranged in Finland. During these three events the participants will have the opportunity to collaborate with each other in workshops, field trips and exchange information on the themes of the project. The impact of the project will come out in tomorrow’s adults and decision makers. Therefore we need to provide the children with opportunities to participate in looking after the environment, to encourage them to become active citizens in their local community and to solve environmental issues, so that they may live on a clean and pleasant planet. Special focus should be put on single, but important steps at the present. In addition to the pupils, the project will affect also the whole school, the families, the surrounding community and other stakeholders.
Climate change represents one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Schools play a substantial role in the education of tomorrow’s adults and decision makers. For this reason we created this 3-year Erasmus+ KA229 project that involves six European preprimary and primary schools from different countries: Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain. Because of the Covid-19 Pandemics, we had to ask for an extension of one more school year for our project. This international contact between the schools created opportunities to build bridges between the different countries and cultures, creating friendships and exchanging best practices, experiences and ideas in order to empower children to be more active, positive and responsible with our planet. The objectives of the project had the role to make the participants aware about the problems of climate change, to empower them to be more active, positive and responsible with our planet, to make everybody understand that small deeds make a big difference. Additional aims of the project were to increase understanding for other people in different countries and cultures, to develop a European identity, to strengthen the use of English and the awareness of other languages, to develop key competences as well as basic and digital skills. The project focussed on six themes as challenges for the pupils: energy, waste, air pollution, preserving nature, biodiversity and water. The challenges were introduced to the pupils by the mascot of the project, the teddy bear called Jan. He traveled virtually through Europe. In addition to the six challenges, he gave eight other assignments for the pupils. Working in the project, the pupils developed a responsible view and lifestyle to maintain and build a beautiful and unique Earth. Every partner school was responsible for organizing a challenge of a theme for all the partner schools. Each challenge raised awareness, made the pupils work together with their peers from the other countries and take action in order to contribute to reducing pollution and waste, to recycle, to save energy and water, preserve nature and help to protect biodiversity. The pupils worked on the challenges and assignments in their everyday school life by looking for information on the themes, designing a logo for the project, making a song, two drama plays, a board game (a real one and a digital one), a journal, PP-presentations, photos and videos of the activities, drawings, animations, posters, artworks, poems, exhibitions etc. The schools also made field trips studying on the themes and invited experts to visit the school. An info corner was arranged by each school to present the works and other information. The results of the activities were uploaded as fact files to the eTwinning project. During the project there were also two short-term learning events for the pupils. They had to be postponed and done in a different order than originally planned, because of the impact on our everyday life by the Covid-19 pandemics. A short-term joint staff training event was arranged in Finland, which took place in February 2023, for the same reason. During these three events the participants had the opportunity to collaborate with each other in workshops, field trips and exchange information on the themes of the project. The impact of the project will come out in tomorrow’s adults and decision makers. Therefore we need to provide the children with opportunities to participate in looking after the environment, to encourage them to become active citizens in their local community and to solve environmental issues, so that they may live on a clean and pleasant planet. Special focus should be put on single, but important steps at the present. In addition to the pupils, the project also had an impact on the schools, the families, the surrounding community and other stakeholders involved in it.