Climate Change is Here

"Climate Change is here" has given the possibility for the representatives of 5 schools/countries – Spain (the coordinator), Portugal, Italy, Croatia and Greece - to collaborate and accomplish a common project that lies on our concern about the consequences of Climate Change and the resulting problems on our UNESCO heritage.We have confirmed with the experiences in the partner countries where we have carried out the mobilities that the best ways to minimize the risks that threaten cultural heritage is to educate and reinforce the feeling of appropriation of these goods at the school level, specially in our European cultural context.. The partners schools had already been working prior to the development of the project in the following fields that were a common necessity in our schools: -activities to promote a conscious and greener life attitude among students and to give them information, tools and skills that make them have a more positive and realistic look to the future.We have detected through common surveys carried out in all schools that there was a great lack of knowledge about environmental issues and Climate Change among students and teachers and that a large part of the students were unaware to differentiate of what the declaration of World Heritage means or the difference between material and intangible ones. -priorities of social inclusion, promotion of democratic values, increasing students motivation to learn The pandemic was a serious inconvenience in the motivation of students who were severely deprived of social life that we have tried to alleviate with all kinds of group activities but without physical contact using new technologies as a means of communication. -internationalization of the school and establishment of a sustained European cooperation The number of participating members in international activities of our schools was low until the beginning of the project and the Italian school had never joined Erasmus. -innovative practices, engagement of all students and teachers specially when we host or in contest like the logo one -positive learning environment, our teenagers needed the motivation that connected school with real life. Over the course of 36 months the partners have joined efforts to connect students, teachers, parents and communities thought one program with the following objectives: 1-Assessing the impact of Climate Change in our cities and its effect on our UNESCO heritage; 2-Increasing debate with partners about heritage management and protection; 3-Learning to protect our climate and environment through our personal attitude; 4-Promoting an European identity discussing about common problems; 5-Spreading our findings and recommendations in our communities. The running of the project started with traainig mobility for teachers at Spain, and included 4 short-term exchanges of group of pupils (14-18 years old) in order to involve the largest possible number of students in foreign experiences. The project implementation also included 9 virtual meetings: 3 of three of them during the first 18 months of the project and which served to put teachers and students in contact due to the impossibility of traveling, 4 meetings before each mobility flow and to establish the practical/logistic arrangements necessary to mobility process; the others 2 teachers meetings for quality assurance and project evaluation (at the end of the 1st year of implementation and at the end of the project). Four phisycal mobilities have been carried out in 18 months , 12 Unesco Heritage have been visited to know better about them and the impact of Global Warming and conmemmorative days have taken place at least twice a year at each school . The methodology of the partnership strategy is based on a cooperation model - once the needs/potential of each school have been identified, activities have been defined and assigned to each school; each partner has been responsible for their tasks/activities according to the planning/design of the project; all of them have been cooperating in network team for permanent monitoring of indicators/results, elaboration of questionnaires/surveys, technical and financial reports, implementation of activities and dissemination campaigns and support on elaboration of management documents. This approach ensured the consecution of the objectives we pursued through the main project phases. As for the communication model, the Spanish school has been ensuring, at the right time and along the project, that information has been obtained and interacted with those involved and has determined the information/communication needs of project stakeholders. The partners have been working to develop through this project skills/abilities among participants but also new approaches at the institutional/community levels. About tangible results, we got the following outputs: -Sustainable tourist guide "Love it Save it" -Green Agreement -Campaign videos regarding good habits at schools/families -Compared Mediterranean study regarding analyzes of local climographs and sea level measurements. -Photo records of local heritage at climate risk and damages -Invasive flora/fauna records -Recipes with leftlovers -Logo/contests/commemorative days -Dissemination brochures, project site and eTwinning. As for intangibles results we registered several outcomes: -we have raised environmental and heritage awareness at school and locally with conferences, dissemination activities and school campaignes to save energy and carbon footprint.We have verified this by repeating the surveys on environmental awareness at the end of the project. -we have participated in local activities organized by establishments, NGO, town halls and teacher centers -we have been working hard in the change of habits at school and home and at management level -we have reduced the comsumption of energy at our schools in asignificant ammount -we have increased the carrying out of activities on foot and in the natural environment for all the students of our schools -we have been working at our schools with new and a diversity of teaching strategies created specially for this project, for example sustanaible cooking, gymkhanas, logo contest or photo safaris. -our travelling participants and those who participated hosting our local mobilities have mproved digital and English language skills -school teachers have practised English and we have increased the number of them participating in international activities -we have promoted international relationship among students/teachers and reinforced internationalization of the educational space and gained visibility/attractiveness at local/national level using social media. -four of the five participant schools got an Erasmus Acreditation during the development of the project. Regarding impacts and long term benefits, the cooperation network have added significant added value for the territory/stakeholders involved; to complement the objectives foreseen in the educational projects of the schools involved, giving a new dimension to projects already existing and to develop new approaches that respond to new challenges in the field of education in order to increase the community's and students' interest in the school's educational offer. We will keep working in Erasmus and another international projects, our schools will use the tools like the Green Agreement to continiue working in bioclimatic awarenes Contact with European centers will serve to implement new projects and he skills that teachers have acquired will serve to improve interest in their classes. Four of the schools will continue working totogether in k1 projects using the Erasmus Acreditation we have obtained in the last year of this project. We will use and design sustainable travel guides to apply in our trips and keep controlling the carbon footprint of our schools saving energy and promoting it on families.