The term sustainability has become an integral part of our daily lives and concerns each and every one of us. It's no longer possible to read or watch the news without being confronted by the terms "Fridays for Future", "climate change", "globalization", "global warming" and "consumerism". These are just a few elect terms from a list that could be continued endlessly and that shows the necessity of getting involved in developing a more sustainable way of living. Our schools think that it is the responsibility of every educational institution to work on that goal which is why we would like to contribute to it by starting this project. The participants of the project "Creating and Living Sustainability" are students and teachers from five schools in Spain, Italy, Denmark, Finland and Germany respectively as well as members of the Spanish organization BIOSFERA. There will be a meeting in each country which will be attended by three teachers and six students from each participating school. The participants for those meetings will be selected mainly by their interest in the project and their willingness to work on it. Nevertheless, the coordination team will try to include students of different age groups and types of school as well as teachers from different departments. The activities of this project are designed in a way to reflect a continuous process, i.e. each meeting starts with the reflection upon the previous activities and results and then continues to work and improve them. The first activity consists of the creation of an analysis of the current state in the participating countries. Suitable methods to compile such an analysis will be introduced by the organization BIOSFERA that will also support the participants in this endeavour. In the course of the following meeting, those analyses should provide a base for the needs assessment which the participants will have to compile in small groups. In this phase, each group will focus on one specialized area. As those areas are not yet defined and will be the result of the previous analyses of the current states, the methods to assess those needs cannot be determined at this point in time. After identifying the needs, the third meeting will be about the development of ideas for suitable solutions and the creation of those solutions. Said solutions could be concepts (e.g. guidelines for more sustainability in schools), services (e.g. sustainable services in tourism) or, if possible, products (e.g. products created from metal scraps). During this activity the groups are asked to analyze and evaluate their ideas in order to identify the most suitable solution. After the meeting, the resulting concepts, services or products will be tranferred into a trial period. In the fourth meeting, the results of the trial period will be reflected upon in order to optimize the solutions. Afterwards, those optimized results will then be put through a second trial period in order to determine if they produced the desired effect in terms of sustainability. Apart from determining the suitability of the results, the last meeting will also include their publication through talks, newspaper articles and websites. In the course of their time at school, our students develop a variety of skills relating to school and its subjects. The participation in this project, however, will also facilitate the development of inter-disciplinary skills like project expertise and thereby prepare them ideally for the challenges of the world of work. Sustainability, however, is not only a challenge confined to the world of work and, therefore, our project aims not just at preparing our students of their future working lives but also for the challenges of their future lives in general. For this reason, it is important that they develop a deliberate and economical handling of nature and its resources. The result of such a consciousness can only be an environmentally aware and sustainable behaviour that will be internalized and shared. Furthermore, the European collaboration will strengthen the personal skills of our students (e.g. social and multicultural skills), help to develop a European consciousness and lead to the gain of new European partners for our schools. The work on the project "Creating and Living Sustainability" will also lead to the realization that the success of any project depends on the success of working in a team and the willingness to learn with and from each other - in this case on a European scale.
The term sustainability has become an integral part of our daily lives and concerns each and every one of us. It's no longer possible to read or watch the news without being confronted by the terms "Fridays for Future", "climate change", "globalization", "global warming" and "consumerism". These are just a few elect terms from a list that could be continued endlessly and that shows the necessity of getting involved in developing a more sustainable way of living. Our schools think that it is the responsibility of every educational institution to work on that goal which is why we would like to contribute to it by starting this project. The participants of the project "Creating and Living Sustainability" are students and teachers from four schools in Italy, Denmark, Finland and Germany respectively. The project was started in a virtual mobility and then continued through four mobilities taking place in the locations of each participating school. Those meetings were attended by two to three teachers and six students from each school. The participants for those meetings were selected mainly by their interest in the project and their willingness to work on it. The virtual mobility was designed to kick off the project and introduce the participants to the relevance of sustainability and the consequences on the planet of not living sustainably. After that, the participants were asked to present the actions their countries had taken to be sustainable and where each country still faced problems. Over the course of the further meetings, these actions were witnessed and evaluated through visits and lectures. Through discussing the problems that the countries still faced and providing examples from other nations, new concepts for sustainability were developed and already existing concepts were improved upon. In the course of their time at school, our students develop a variety of skills relating to school and its subjects. The participation in this project, however, also facilitated the development of inter-disciplinary skills like project expertise and thereby prepared them ideally for the challenges of the world of work. Sustainability, however, is not only a challenge confined to the world of work and, therefore, our project was aimed not just at preparing our students for their future working lives but also for the challenges of their future lives in general. For this reason, it is important that they developed a deliberate and economical handling of nature and its resources. The result of such a consciousness was an environmentally aware and sustainable behaviour that has been internalized and shared. Furthermore, the European collaboration strengthened the personal skills of our students (e.g. social and multicultural skills), helped to develop a European consciousness and lead to the gain of new European partners for our schools.