Webinar: international I-CAN Erasmus+ sustainability in education project shares learnings

Join with your peers in a webinar as you help your students to think critically about sustainability and explore how to engage effectively.

Open to: all project and other interested teachers / educators who would like to find out more about the approaches developed through the I-CAN project (see below)

Date and registration: Tuesday 25th April from 4.00pm to 5.00pm (UK time)

Register your interest using this email and we will send you a link:  schools@interclimate.org

Last project meeting in Turin

The project partners met in Turin in the delightful hospitality of LABC on the 22nd and 23rd February 2023. In this day and a half of work, they reviewed the activities and progress made over the past months, analysing successes, critical issues and challenges that emerged in the different countries. The last activities to be completed before the end of the implementation period, with a focus on conferences and multiplier events, are scheduled in the coming weeks.

The Climate Conference Kit is online

Not only will you find all the instructions and materials to organise a COP conference in your classroom or school, the project partners have prepared plenty of activities to stimulate critical thinking on climate change!
Explore it to find the activities best suited to your school context!

Climate Conference Kit

Don’t forget to share your experiences with other teachers in the I-CAN community.

It will soon be available in all project languages.

LWC Training Teachers to run mock UN COP Conferences with students

The Liverpool World Centre hosted a teachers’ workshop at Squash [a local social enterprise café and garden in Liverpool] where we shared some of the free resources available to schools. The aim was to help them run in school COP style conferences.  As part of this fun packed afternoon teachers took part in some active sessions where we modelled school learning activities form the Climate Action Guide.

We invited Kelly Mundy from Oxfam to speak about the impact of the climate emergency around the world and in particular the fact that ‘more than 44 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and South Sudan and over 28 million people are facing severe levels of hunger.’[ Oxfam https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/climate-and-food-crisis-east-and-central-africa]. The problems being experienced are impacting the lives of many families with children. They are facing a rapidly changing climate characterized by erratic rains in the Horn, East, Central Africa where there has been a prolonged serious drought since 2021. There is so much evidence of the climate emergency impacting many lives and often causing displacement as people move in search of water and pasture.

Teachers were encouraged to use the resources from the I Can project as a way of including climate education on the school curriculum. The teachers were impressed with the active learning strategies and were keen to take the resources such as the briefing papers for a mock COP back into their schools to see their classroom impact. We look forward to hearing how this goes. Jacquie Ayre Global Learning Education Officer LWC

I-CAN Community – How to

Joining the I-CAN community is easy.
Here is a short video with instructions.
We look forward to seeing you!

Empowering young people to have a voice for climate action

People don’t realise that when they hurt the environment, they are also hurting themselves” – Ella-Rose, Dakota, and Emelia from Kings Meadow  School, Sefton UK .

LWC has been working on Merseyside to host mock UN style Cop Conferences as part of the I Can project. This autumn brought the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Egypt, where the future of the planet was discussed between world leaders, a keystone event in driving collaboration against climate change. Whilst COP27 is primarily a discussion between members of the older generation, LWC wanted to bring the conversation to the generation that will be most strongly impacted by climate change throughout their lives. The actions of the conversations we have now will define the future of those currently in school, so it’s only right that their voices should be heard.

At  a recent event LWC worked with two Liverpool University Students who were on a  placement [ Linking learning about Science to society and civic duties]  These are some of their feelings and words after the event. 

We came over from the University of Liverpool and worked together with six schools from Sefton, using the I Can model COP27, at Southport Eco Centre. The six schools all representing different countries from around the world. They collaborated with each other to understand different ideas countries may have and what they could be doing to push each other to go further. The pupils identified that many emerging countries can only react and adapt to climate change whereas developed countries have the power to change conditions; a conversation that has been happening at COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh.

The pupils researched important issues for their specific countries, for example, the sea level rise in the Marshall Islands compared to pollution in cities of more developed countries such as China. They branched off into four groups to discuss four topics most relevant to their climate and issues: energy, cities, forests (and food) and oceans. We have put some the key points and recurring themes raised during these breakout sessions into a word-cloud:

The pledges the pupils left the conference with an agreement on were:

  1. Increase awareness and education around climate change.
  2. Share our skills and knowledge about climate change between countries.
  3. Increase and develop technology to fight climate change.
  4. Persuade governments to cooperate and continue working together.
  5. Raise the amount of money for climate change solutions.

These pledges will be taken forward in the work schools do within their Eco Councils and sustainability projects in the future. One of the guest speakers encouraged eco-councillors representing their schools to utilise outdoor space, ask teachers to teach more about nature and get as many people involved as possible.

Pupils from one of the schools spoke  about the impact their eco council has within their school; “We are spreading awareness because it’s our generation that’s affected by climate change the most, and we are the ones who will have to live with it. Children learning from other children is the best way to spread awareness into our community.” Amplifying children’s voices is one of the most impactful things we can do in the battle against climate change; our future world leaders are learning how to speak up, ask important questions and demand answers. All change starts by initiating a conversation; not only are we initiating a conversation between pupils, but they will also then go home and initiate more conversations within their families, classrooms, and the wider community.

What we can take away from the day is that we all have a voice and ideas to contribute in the efforts to decrease climate change and that we can use this voice to put pressure on those in power and encourage more collaboration.  This is one of the very  positive impacts of  the  I Can project.

Baby 8 billion has just been born: ‘What will we say when baby 8 billion is old enough to ask, what did you do for our world, and for our planet when you had the chance?’

 

Written by:

Lily Eaton, 2nd year BSc Biological Sciences student at the University of Liverpool and

Juliet Pone, 2nd year BSc Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool

Webinar: Run your own COP27

InterClimate Network (ICN), as part of our I-CAN Erasmus+ Project and working with Just Ideas, is pleased to invite you to join our free online webinar to introduce our resource and support you in facilitating your own COP27 Climate Conference with young people (11-18 years).
Aimed at: Teachers, facilitators, interested sixth form students and other organisations.
(Please feel free to share this invitation with schools that you think would be interested).

Date and registration: Please use the link to sign up
Thursday 20th October, 4.30 – 5.30 pm webinar link

Session aims to provide:

  • Introduction I-CAN Toolkit and COP27 resource (access the briefings here)
  • Outline of how to run your own climate conference
  • Tips for chairing to ensure lively participation
  • Time for your questions

ICN has adapted our tried and tested UN-style climate conference format to sit within school priorities and time-constraints. It can be used in a range of settings: classroom; year groups; on-line; with neighbouring schools.
Student teams are guided to research and represent a range of countries, presenting their country pledges andclimate challenges. Role-play methodologies bring to life critical climate negotiations and collaborations to raise global ambition for action during the conference.
For COP27 we have updated our award-winning COP26 in the Classroom resource and continued its objective to sharply focus on lived experience of climate change around the world, particularly for young people and the most vulnerable. Working with our Erasmus+ I-CAN project partners (see I-CAN page below), this resource now forms part of a comprehensive new Climate Action Toolkit.

Further details:

  • The webinar forms part of our Erasmus+ International Climate Action Network Project (I-CAN).
  • Just Ideas, our long-standing partners, are collaborating in this training initiative.
  • If you cannot make this date, please let us know and we can look to run another session.
  • Contact and any questions: schools@interclimate.org

Enseigner la durabilité avec le projet I-CAN

En mai et juin derniers, le LABC a été accueilli par le lycée technique Norberto Bobbio de Carignano (Turin) pour un cycle de leçons consacrées à la durabilité et aux thèmes du projet I-CAN. Pendant les leçons, qui ont impliqué des élèves de classes de deuxième et troisième année, les formateurs du LABC ont présenté les objectifs et les résultats du projet, et ont discuté de concepts importants tels que le changement climatique, la durabilité et la responsabilité. Les élèves se sont sentis impliqués et ont exprimé leur opinion à leur tour, créant ainsi un débat stimulant et original

Les moments dédiés à la réflexion et à l’approfondissement théorique ont été mélangés avec des activités pratiques et des sessions expérientielles consacrées aux jeux, à la créativité et à l’échange de points de vue, en suivant également la méthodologie du « Guide d’action climatique ».

Les leçons – spécifiquement conçues pour stimuler les élèves à développer des formes de pensée critique à traduire en actions visant la durabilité et la protection de l’environnement – ont eu un tel succès qu’elles seront répétées à l’automne, dans des classes différentes.

Réunion transnationale I-CAN à Lille

La deuxième réunion transnationale du projet I-CAN a eu lieu à Lille (France) les 11 et 12 avril 2022.

Cette réunion a été l’occasion pour tous les partenaires de partager leurs actions récentes dans chaque pays, de réfléchir à ce qui a été mis en œuvre jusqu’à présent et de commencer à planifier les prochaines activités.

Nous avons partagé l’état d’avancement de chaque pays, avec une description des succès, des progrès et une vue d’ensemble de l’évolution du projet.

Le contenu de la nouvelle boîte à outils (IO2) a également été discuté. Cette production interactive fournira aux enseignants des activités pédagogiques liées à l’action climatique à mettre en œuvre avec leurs élèves. Les activités proposées seront principalement axées sur le changement de comportement à l’école et dans la communauté au sens large.

Nous sommes impatients de partager notre travail avec les enseignants !

UK focus on COP26

All high-level decisions – from leadership at school, to the choice of Prime Minister, to country pledges at the UN – have an impact on the urgency of our response to the climate crisis right now, and profoundly affect how we will live in the future. The core motivation for our schools’ UN-style COP resource is to meaningfully engage as many young people as possible with these decisions by:
• Bringing to life critical thinking about the global impact of the climate crisis, with sharp focus on lived experience of climate change, especially for young people and the most vulnerable around the world
• Providing a route for secondary students to engage with COP26 and COP27
• Being as accessible and relevant as possible particularly for schools reopening after lockdown.

Timed with COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, ICN ran 5 regional climate conferences with Local Council support in Bristol, Gloucestershire, London, Reading and Solihull. Young people’ views were heard as they had direct access to local decision-makers, here with the Leader of Solihull Council and explore their feedback here.
Many more young people used the resource materials in other COP26 conferences, including whole year groups’ classroom conferences led by an I-CAN project teacher and a schools’ sustainability network conference in Avon, involving another I-CAN project teacher.
The conferences contributed to a significant year of action across like-minded civil society organisations with one aim: to direct as much focus as possible on the decisions being made by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP).
BBC South Today coverage in Reading Conference

Some of the conference students putting their questions to the leader of the Council in Solihull