As a result of the above mentioned needs, THE AIM of LET IT GROW! project was: training teachers to integrate environmental sustainability learning activities throughout the curriculum in order to raise awareness from an early age and to engage citizens to be active change-makers. We achieved these, through 3 objectives each targeted mainly towards: teachers, learners and community: 1. Concerning teachers, we wanted to achieve the following: - Grow the number of trained teachers in environmental sustainability to at least 30% of the total number of teachers from partner schools by the end of the project. - Give opportunities to participating teachers to naturally include environmental sustainability activities in the regular flow of curricular lessons. 2. Concerning learners, through the project we wanted to: - Grow the number of actively involved learners in implementing environmental sustainability actions to at least 75% of learners from all partner schools by the end of the project. 3. Concerning the community, the project objective was to: - Raise awareness of environmental sustainability in the community through 14 campaigns (reforestation and clean-up) and 14 workshops by the end of the project.
To achieve sustainable development and greener societies all partner schools understood that sustainability was not an endeavor for one country alone. Each and every one of our schools is near protected natural areas making us more aware of how species interact within their ecosystems and how they are affected by human influences. We truly believed in the need to conserve wildlife, to incorporate more eco-friendly habits in our life. Through common practices we wanted to “grow” a sincere urge to live sustainably. Our project identified the following problems: 1. Teachers were not trained and lacked models of activities on sustainability so it was not a common practice to teach sustainability. 2. Learners lacked knowledge on the process and effects of pollution so they weren’t actively involved in finding solutions to real problems. 3. There was a lack of environmental sustainability (ES) culture in our communities that resulted in harmful behaviors to nature. These became directions for our project since we needed to develop coherent programs to integrate curriculum with ES. Also, we lacked experience in organizing large scale events and campaigns. The project offered plenty of opportunities to exercise this.