The main objective of the project “ECO-Aware Us for the Future ECO-EU” is to educate today’s students to become tomorrow’s environmentally responsible citizens. We want to look at the possible ecological dangers and the dark future of the Earth if the mentality of today’s children is not changed to be more, if not totally, environmentally friendly. We believe that only environmentally conscious people can hope to preserve and protect the planet in the future. It is only logical to use schools as platforms for changing environmental awareness, especially since we know that there is a healthy interest in the environment among the students in our schools. Our motivation is to strengthen this interest and turn it into potentially valuable teaching and learning tool. We want our students to be aware of the local and global ecological threats that hover over our health and to propose imaginative, effective, and tangible solutions to this problem. Among the biggest challenges, we face today is environmental protection. At the International level, these concerns have echoed on many of the summits which have resulted in important resolutions which have not always been implemented, such as the Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Rio Declaration, the Declaration on Forests, and Agenda 21, which have contributed to the identification of the problems and the development of the
increasingly comprehensive environmental awareness. It is in this spirit that we seek to change the attitude and behaviour towards the environment in order to prepare young people for knowledgeable, dynamic, and conscious citizenship in the face of current environmental problems.
We want to make our students aware of the problems they will inherit in the future – that the planet they will have custody of will be in a much worse condition than what previous generations had to deal with. In fact, previous generations never had to worry about the environment, and even now that environmental problems are knocking on their door, they fail to identify them. This is why we believe it is important that our students are aware of movements such as Fridays for Future, through which young people try to ensure a secure future for themselves and the Earth.
Apart from the objectives related to our priorities, we also want to promote the internationalization of the teaching process in our schools and improve the participants’ English language skills (English will be the project language).
Throughout the project, we intend to hold meetings with students from our schools to share our findings. Upon their return, students participating in the LTTs will share the knowledge gained during the trip, which will hopefully
broaden the circle of people shaping civic attitudes – paying more attention to the environment with an increased sense of responsibility.
Through the eTwinning and TwinSpace platforms, students and teachers will safely use the internet to implement international cooperation. We intend to use these resources to exchange information and educational materials. Students will participate in forums to introduce themselves, learn, coordinate, and exchange information about the value of their environment and share their findings. Indeed, our schools have already collaborated using eTwinning resources before we submitted this application, and we shared the first videos about the school’s immediate environment in winter, which already reflect the effects of climate change.
In the project preparation, implementation, and follow-up phase, in addition to the already mentioned eTwinning platform, we will use Google Drive, Skype, and Facebook as tools to keep in touch with our partners, communicate, coordinate, organize activities, share experiences and evaluate the results, so that we can change our approach if necessary. Regarding the final phase, dissemination of the results, the Erasmus+ Results Platform will be very useful to show the scope and impact of activities resulting from our project both in the context of our organizations as well as the local communities. We will also create a project website where we can promote and share project results. We aim to increase environmental awareness not only in the communities of participating schools but also to go beyond the boundaries of schools to the homes and families of our students.
