Never before have we been so concerned about our climate as we are today. This topic has motivated youth around the globe to engage in climate protection strikes, which should put pressure on governments around the world. This time the concerns are real, as every day we can follow the news about catastrophes caused by unpredictable weather due to climate change. To achieve changes in our attitude towards the environment, schools and education are vital and crucial. We need to change our habits, consume less, recycle, and produce less garbage. We believe that this is possible, but people need to be educated and sometimes we only need to be reminded of the old practices or our cultural heritage. Our project – titled “Consommer mieux – consommer différemment” / “Consume better - consume differently” – includes several different generations of children from pre-school, through elementary, and finally to secondary levels of education in France and Slovenia. This project will include 50 students who will actively participate in the planned activities. This way we believe we can make a difference. On the first visit to I. gimnazija v Celju (Slovenia), students will learn about recycling clothes that can still be used. An exchange of used clothes among students will be organised. They will collect old, worn-out cotton shirts and jeans and come up with a plan of how to recycle them. In the school lab, students will experiment with natural dyeing processes with dyes from leftover food, such as red onion, red cabbage, and the like. Students will undertake a trip to The Solčava region in the Alps which is known for its particular breed of mountain sheep, called “Jezersko-Solčava” sheep. There they will learn about the production of wool and its usage. They will make simple products out of wool by means of felting, and they will also try out knitting and crocheting. On the second visit to I. gimnazija v Celju (Slovenia), students will learn about the health effects of herbs that are grown in the high school’s raised herb garden. The students will plant herbs, take care of them, and pick them. Later on, they will dry them and learn how to preserve them. In the classroom, there will be a debate organised with the title “Natural Medicines and Cosmetics in Comparison with Synthetic Ones”. Students will also carry out steam distillation of lavender, sage, and other herbs. This will lead into production of soap, relaxation drops and other objects use in daily hygiene. On this visit, students will get to see one of the oldest apothecaries in Europe (at Olimje), the herb farm Kalan, and the Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing, which is situated in nearby Žalec. In both of the visits, the activities will vary from field work, lab work, assessing knowledge before and after the project, learning how to make useful products, seeing where things come from, and learning about cultural heritage. When Slovenian will come to France, we will exhange our home-made soap and cleaning products recipies, we will use the labs in the middle school and the high school to distil the herbs our Slovenian partners will have bring with them With the help of Biology and Chemistry tracher we will start from scratch and be able to make home-made products. By raising awareness about how to use, reuse, and even make clothes, and by growing one’s own herbs and turning them into products for daily hygiene, among other things, we can make a difference.To pursue this goal, we are striving to include students in activities that are not farfetched but are easily applicable in their daily life. In France we will also organize short school trips to local organizations involved in the improvement of our lives. Every school who will receive students will pay attention to make them at ease, as the students will aged from 6 to 18 years-old. Some students (from the vocational part of the high school Pierre Méchain) are not used to travelling so the aim of this project will be to open their eyes and their spirits, and to make Europe an accessible place where it is possible to exchange, practice, speak and debate with European classmates. This project was built over a period of 3 years (October 2017 to today), around a theme of growth and topicality: consuming better, consuming differently. The actions envisaged make it possible to train future responsible environmental citizens.Each action is designed according to the age, knowledge and skills of the students and will be presented with a focus on exchanges between peers. These different activities and actions will focus on the awareness of the need to change lifestyle around "homemade", reuse, recycling, local consumption and eco-mobility. We will focus our work on a potential benefit: changing the way of life and the way of consuming in schools and families. This multidisciplinary project requires the mobilization of transversal skills in several areas at both elementary school, college and high school.
In March 2019 teachers from three French schools (primary school Victor Schoelcher of Crépy in county Aisne, secondary school les Frères Le Nain in Laon and vocational high school Pierre Méchain in Laon) took part in a teachers mobility scheme with job shadowing in order to discover the Slovenian school system (primary, secondary and high schools). We were stunned by how important actions towards promoting sustainable development were within the two Slovenian schools in Celje (primary, secondary and high schools). Moreover, we realized that in France as well as in Slovenia, consumptions habits lead to a great deal of litter, especially plastic wastes. As a result we became motivated to work together on this topic in order to improve sustainable development education within our schools and we wanted to work especially on « consume better, consume differently ». That same year (February 2020) the European Environment Agency had published a report « Environment in Europe : findings and perspective 2020 », which concluded that urgent action was needed to reach the objectives of 2030. In addition, Slovenia is a country that few of our students know anything about and building an Erasmus project +KA229 seemed completely relevant to the idea of developing links with another EU country. Mrs Andreja Lorencak, French teacher at the Gymnazija V Celju High School (in Celje) volunteered to welcome us immediately and joined us in taking part in a project on that topic. There was no available teacher in the Celje’s primary or secondary schools but we managed to find a partner school in Maribor (novna Sola Franceta Preserna) with the English teacher Marjeta Bunford Selinsek. We were meant to meet up to produce the project together in Slovenia at the beginning of March 2020 but, due to the COVID 19 outbreak, our « preparatory » mobility was cancelled and we were forced to write up the application documents via video conference, which did not make the writing easy. Objectives were as follows : to motive students to reduce their carbon footprint individually (at home) and collectively (in their school) ; to use the class and the curriculum to integrate our activities ; to reach out to another EU country by communicating in English and in French. To achieve this we organised numerous activities within our school during the 36 months (we were granted an extra year due to the Covid 19 epidemics) : -Creation of permacultured gardens (within the different schools) -Using plants and herbs collected to cook different recipes (infusions, cakes, soups, etc.) - Making home made cosmetics and home made cleaning products in order to reduce waste to a maximum - Cleaning of urban and rural areas - Write up of a trilingual recipe book by the students (French, English and Solvenian) - Work on the climate mural - Taking part in citizens debates on the theme of sustainable development - Christmas decorations workshops done with recycled objects - Learning about textile industry led pollution - recycling wool and used clothes workshops These activities were put in place within different subjects and clubs as well as during pupils’ mobility. These mobilities also allowed us to meet our third objective : to develop a European citizenship conscience. Objectives met : We think we have met our objectives as students have produced a 72 pages trilingual recipe book containing cosmetics, cleaning products and cooking recipes in order to promote behaviours aiming to significantly reduce the amount of daily litter, at home and at school. This book will be distributed to all participating students but also among the educational staff via the library and the school online working space as well as parents. These actions are set to last since the Pierre Méchain vocational high school and the Frères Le Nain secondary school were granted the E3D label and are to continue promoting sustainable development. Thanks to these actions, some students have changed their consumption habits (making home made products, using second hand products). Furthermore the mobilities have set up such a real link between students and between teachers that these exchanges will continue beyond the project.