The OCEAN Project - developping active citizenship and awareness for the future and the Environnment - brings together 6 schools (1middle school and 2 French high schools including the maritime aquaculture high school of Cherbourg,1 Italian college,1 Irish college located on a small island,1 Spanish college) around environmental issues and in particular the protection of marine environments. The 6 schools, all located in coastal areas, enroll young people aged 13 to 18 from modest backgrounds who wish to participate in major environmental debates but do not always have the knowledge and tools to make their voices heard. The school coordinating the project wanted to involve its students from the Local School Inclusion Unit to allow this audience with specific needs to feel part of a major project. 145 students from 4 European countries will be involved in the project, the youngest pupils being tutored by high school students from the Maritime High School and the General High School which has a very active scientific centre. Partner institutions share the same objectives: - to make European openness a reality for pupils and to build a sense of belonging to Europe through mobility, which will be a first experience for most pupils. - to raise awareness of the protection of the environment for pupils who are mostly removed from the major societal debates and give them the intellectual tools to participate in these debates. - to build with them an enlightened and committed European citizenship that will enable them to participate in concerted European actions in favour of the environment with the help of associations. Based on Commander Cousteau's sentence: "We love what has marvelled us, and we protect what we love." the Erasmus + project built by the European teachers aims at making students discover the marine environment, its beauty, its diversity and its fragility and make them work on scientific data to have a better understanding of the issues concerning the protection of marine environment so that they will be able to take part in actions in favor of the protection of this environnent. The art, music, litterature, history teachers will first organise activities related to the discovery of the marine environnent in a sensitive and artistic approach and then the biology and physics teachers will make the students work on scientific analysis of waste on the coast and in the seabed. The productions (photos, recorded sounds, scientific data etc..) will be shared on the project's e-Twinning space to develop both a true sensitivity to the immediate maritime environment of each participant and a scientific understanding approach of the environmental issues. The aim here is to raise students' awareness and give them the tools to understand the major debates on the protection of the oceans and the coasts. The activities carried out during mobility are designed to create a strong link between participants who will discover together the marine heritage of each partner and act on the spot in a citizen's way in favor of the protection of the sea in connection with local associations (coastal waste collection, classification, analyses and comparisons from one country to another). Thanks to these mobilities students will develop social skills (opening up to others, adapting to a new environment, cooperating, communicating in a foreign language), scientific skills transferable in school learning ( develop a scientific approach, observe, collect, classify, analyze, compare), language skills (learning to communicate in English, French, Spanish and Italian) and citizenship in action. The European week when all participants will meet in Cherbourg will allow students to share the work carried out over two years, to prepare broadcast materials for the general public and primary schools, to develop concrete proposals to protect marine environments underpinned by their new scientific knowledge. The international debates held at this high-end event will be an opportunity for students to use the scientific knowledge acquired, the cross-cutting skills developed to make concrete proposals for action in favour of protection of marine environments addressed to elected officials in their territories. What is expected from this project is : - the creation of lasting links between young people and a real contribution to their opening to the world - the students ' acquisition of intellectual and sensitive tools that will enable them to become European eco-ambassadors on their territory - the creation of a long-term European network of institutions committed to building an enlightened citizenship among young people
It is in a context in which the European Union is weakened, in which it no longer makes sense to a part of the population and in which we are constantly reminded of the climate emergency, that the OCEAN project ( Committed Citizen Objective for the Future and Nature) was born. Its objectives were clearly identified from the construction of the project, led by the Collège Ingénieur Cachin: to develop students' sense of belonging to Europe, to make them aware (and to make those around them aware) of environmental protection and to commit and inform European citizens. This ambitious Erasmus+ project brought together two hundred and thirty students and forty French, Irish, Italian and Spanish adults from six different establishments, from middle school to high school, all close to the marine world, at the heart of the project. In addition, this project is in line with the requirements of the inclusive school by involving students from French, Italian and Irish ULIS, as well as students with disabilities or special needs. For two years, all the students have been able to carry out numerous educational activities in the literary, artistic and scientific disciplines, the productions of which were deposited on the Etwinning platform, the place of exchange for the project. These productions and the coherence of all the activities have made it possible to bring out more precise lines of work specific to each territory before the mobility of the pupils. From then on, these mobilities could be both the time to reflect upon the knowledge acquired by all and that of the construction of tangible proposals adapted to each one. The issues thus addressed have therefore focused on heating systems and their environmental impact, erosion and the way to protect our coasts, the management of wastewater and waste, plastic pollution in the seas, the air pollution (and more particularly the one linked to maritime traffic) and on global warming. A restitution of the work carried out during these two years, in the auditorium of the Cité de la mer, by all the students involved in the project, made it possible to confirm that the objectives initially set have been fully achieved. Indeed, students strengthened by new transnational friendships, linguistic, cultural and social skills, having acquired solid scientific knowledge, aware of the beauty of their environment and therefore eager to safeguard it, spoke on stage in front of elected officials, the press, their teachers and all their peers. From then on, these new true eco-ambassadors will be able to continue to spread their messages in the primary schools of their sector and to their relatives.