Healthy or Polluted Environment!

We intended to take attention to nature and its problems since it is our home and our future. We became strangers to it through the years and then we started suffering from many environmental prob...

We intended to take attention to nature and its problems since it is our home and our future. We became strangers to it through the years and then we started suffering from many environmental problems which are threatening our lives now. Therefore in this project we aimed to raise the awareness of teachers and students about environmental problems, encourage them to take place in environmental sustainability, and foster their green skills. We wanted to remind every stakeholder that we were part of the earth and we had responsibilities towards it. We mainly focused on the waste problem because we identified there was a direct and strong relation between the waste and other environmental problems. Waste management was also realized as one of the biggest deficiencies according to the needs analysis questionnaires implemented at our schools. For this reason, we aimed to build a common waste management plan for our schools in the project. We wanted to be an exemplary for other schools and institutions and inspire them. Moreover, we also aimed to improve the key competences of both the teachers and students, comprehend the common values and achieve the civic engagement which is an important step to become a European citizen.

First, we had a teachers’ meeting in Narva, Estonia to identify our expectations and needs for the project.We overviewed the project activities and discussed them.Then, we had a training activity about waste and energy at Polytechnic University in Bucharest, Romania. There, we had lectures, visited some labs, completed workshops and had field trips. Afterwards, we had three student-centered activities and studied the waste problem concerning the environmental problems in that area. In the 1st LTT, we dwelled on waste caused by tourism & green-house farming in Antalya. We visited some dumpsites and learned how waste is managed in the city. Also the students studied the environment through games.The 2nd LTT took place in İzmir and we focused on waste and urbanization through some lectures, workshops and visits. Moreover, the students completed the two project outcomes; the project song and urbanization and waste group films. We also started to study on the school waste management plan. The 3d LTT was in Narva about industrialization and waste. Again, we had some lectures and workshops. This time, the students worked on the eBook, and finalized the school waste management plan under the management of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexandra Ioanid

We expected to have both short- and long-term results. The most concrete ones were the school waste management plan, the e-book ‘Industrialization and waste in Estonia’, 2 videos "Urbanization and waste", the project song, the project website, Instagram and Facebook, eTwinning pages prepared by the project partners. It is going to be implemented at schools to sustain the environment. The raise in the awareness, the increase in willingness to take responsibility in environmental activities and the improvement in consumption attitude were the other results. We also observed development in key competences, green skills, civic engagement and common values. The survey results which were carried out at the end of each mobility also proved that. We showed the relation of the waste with the other environmental problems in this project. We studied the topic from different aspects according to the features of the region where the partner school is.We had field trips, had some seminars and collected information about how to deal with waste. We used this information to build a waste management plan for our schools.Each activity got us closer to that plan. In each activity, we took notes down and then used them in our own waste management plan