The Fridays for Future - movement shows that young people see the need to act on climate change, the European Green Deal aims at Europe becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN analyze the areas where change is necessary. But still, the negative effects of climate change are enormous, still, economies rely on past patterns and still, change is something often spoken about but less often acted upon. As we draft this project, the Corona crisis shows the fragility of the global health balance, the necessity to change and the weak points of our economical systems - but also it manifests great solidarity, new creative paths and the need for more sustainable systems in all aspects of life. This is something our project wants to touch upon: In a Central Eastern European - German - Scandinavian partnership, we want to explore new paths of sustainability with our students. Starting from the SDGs formulated by the UN, we want to focus on five of them, one for each participating school. The five schools from Slovakia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and Denmark have agreed on a two-year project where at least 20 students at the age of 16-18 and two teachers from each country will participate. Each school will host one mobility and all in all send 20 students on mobilities to one of the other countries where they will be hosted by the local students. The benefits of the chosen age group are that the students’ English skills are high enough to communicate on a complex level. Furthermore, they can fill out the role of role models concerning sustainable and responsible actions for their younger peers. The main means of transport will be the train, when possible time-wise, as we want to encourage students to travel more environment-friendly and also learn about the Interrail project connecting European youth. The main working platform for the project will be eTwinning and Twinspace. For the students, the main objective is to learn about the SDGs and to reflect on how they can be implemented at an individual, school, local, national, European and international level. More importantly, the aim is that they are empowered to act as individuals and become first movers when it comes to implementing changes at school level. To reach these objectives the students will work in international groups during each mobility focusing on the SDG that the hosting school has chosen. Homework about the SDGs and a field trip connected to the SDG will confront them with the European and local aspects and the potentials for action. On the base of this, the students will team up with their peers from the other European schools to apply their newly gained knowledge and discuss their reflexions and steps for action to come up with three creative productions. 1) An interactive presentation that will presented for their peers and hosting families at the mobility and for their fellow students when they return home. 2) A creative campaign designed for the hosting school to nudge its students towards sustainability. 3) A documentary film where one chapter will be made at each mobility and cut into a full documentary at the last mobility in Prague and then shown at all schools. As all products are in a digital format, they can easily be disseminated and spread in the hosting school, the visiting schools and beyond. Made by students, they will address other non-participating youth and inspire them to act. All presentations, creative campaigns and films will be collected and published in one website, so they can be easily shared. For the teachers, the main objectives are to share best practice when it comes to the use of eTwinning, making documentaries and teaching sustainability in an innovative and creative way. The teachers will have a workshop at the beginning of the project that will pivot around these three competences. The aim is that the teachers become inspired and end up as experts in the didactics connected to teaching sustainability, and that they thereby can inspire their colleagues and schools to focus more on sustainability and European partnerships onwards. Furthermore, the teachers will be help the participating students in their personal and professional development during the project. We hope and believe that our project will strengthen youth initiative and contribute to the students’ reflexion, creative solutions, partnerships and actions within the most pressing issues of this European generation - the sustainable future of our development, the future of our hopefully continuously strong European partnerships and, most urgent and most general, the future of our planet. We have the vision that this project will contribute to the environmental responsibility of our schools, the activity and partnership of youth concerning the environment and climate change and thus empower our students and schools to become responsible, critical and active European citizens and institutions.
The Fridays for Future movement showed and shows that young people see the need to act on climate change, the European Green Deal aims at Europe becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN analyze the areas where change is necessary. But still, the negative effects of climate change are enormous, still, economies rely on past patterns and still, change is something often spoken about but less often acted upon. There are great gaps concerning climate action in different regions of Europe and oftentimes, the topic is used by populist parties in a way which is divisive rather then unifying. This is why we chose to create a Central Eastern European - German - Scandinavian partnership in which we wanted to explore new paths of sustainability with our students. Starting from the SDGs formulated by the UN, we aimed to focus on five of them, one for each participating school. The five schools from Slovakia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and Denmark have agreed on a two-year project where at least 20 students at the age of 16-18 and two teachers from each country. Each school hosted one mobility and the participating students were staying in host families in order to immerse deeper into the local culture. For the students, the main objective was to learn about the SDGs and to reflect on how they can be implemented at an individual, school, local, national, European and international level. Most importantly, the aim was that the students are empowered to act and become first movers when it comes to implementing changes at school level. To reach these objectives, the students were working in international groups during each mobility focusing on the SDG that the hosting school has chosen. Homework about the SDGs and a field trip connected to the SDG confronted them with the European and local aspects and the potentials for action. On the base of this, the students were teaming up with their peers from the other European schools to apply their newly gained knowledge and discuss their reflexions and steps for action to come up with three creative productions: 1) An interactive presentation that was presented for their peers and hosting families at the mobility and for their fellow students when they returned home. 2) A creative campaign designed for the hosting school to nudge its students towards sustainability. 3) A documentary film where one chapter was made at each mobility and cut into a full documentary at the last mobility in Prague and then shown at all schools. For the teachers, the main objectives were to share best practice when it comes to the use of eTwinning, making documentaries and teaching sustainability in an innovative and creative way. They had a workshop at the beginning of the project that was pivoting around these three competences. The aim was that the teachers become inspired and end up as experts in the didactics connected to teaching sustainability, and that they thereby can inspire their colleagues and schools to focus more on sustainability and European partnerships onwards. Furthermore, the teachers were be help the participating students in their personal and professional development during the project, as the setting enabled an intense working and communication environment. We hope and believe that our project has strengthened youth initiative and contributed to the students’ reflexion, creative solutions, partnerships and actions within the most pressing issues of this European generation - the sustainable future of our development, the future of our hopefully continuously strong European partnerships and, most urgent and most general, the future of our planet. We had the vision that this project will contribute to the environmental responsibility of our schools, the activity and partnership of youth concerning the environment and climate change and thus empower our students and schools to become responsible, critical and active European citizens and institutions, and looking back at the project as it has been implemented, we are very content to see that we could really raise awareness for these topics in our schools and communities.