Eco-Journalists. Let's Rescue the Earth
▶Summary
The project was a response to emerging information about ongoing negative climate change and global warming as a result of adverse human activities. What kind of world young people will live in depends mainly on our current actions, and we wanted them to get involved in talking about this problem publicly. The project was prepared to help young people understand the issues of climate change and enable them, through the knowledge and skills they gain, to become agents of this change as young journalists. We were particularly motivated by the following needs: - the necessity of providing comprehensive, engaging, and cross-curricular curriculum to educators in schools - the requirement to inspire educators to lead engaging after-school workshops (for example, by taking part in the internationall initiatives, developing workshop concepts collaboratively, and implementing them in global teams). - Lack of engaging foreign education programs for students, particularly in underdeveloped, rural areas like Poland's Bieszczady; - low student awareness of participating organizations and how the media operates; - uncritical acceptance of what the media presents; inability of students to distinguish between trustworthy and unreliable content
▶Objectives
Most of all we wanted to increase the quality of schools’ offer, teachers’ work in extracurricular activities, and build the capacity of participating schools in the field of international cooperation. We also wanted to strengthen the citizenship competencies and ecological awareness of students, by exchanging experience and developing comprehensive and cross-curricular programs of workshops and practical learning. Specifically, we wanted to: - Foster exchange of experience of participating teachers in applying activating teaching methods to strengthen students’ citizenship competencies and ecological awareness - Increase students’ and teachers’ ability to cooperate in the international team - Extend extracurricular learning offer of participating schools in order to raise students’ awareness and shape their attitudes towards the media and climate change - Give the students opportunities for civic engagement and participation in democratic life through increasing media literacy and critical thinking Increase students’ knowledge and skills in protecting the environment and preventing of climate change Ensure the conscious and effective use of digital tools and the internet Improve students’ English language proficiency
▶Activities
The project was divided into 6 ACTIVITIES leading to the achievement of planned results. ACTIVITY 1 KICK-OFF MEETING - to create conditions for good cooperation ACTIVITY 2 - LANGUAGE WORKSHOPS - to enable common work during the workshops and building relations between students ACTIVITY 3 - JOURNALISM WORKSHOPS - to enable civic engagement in the role of journalists in self-established and run web-portal ACTIVITY 4 - ECO-WORKSHOPS - to help students understand the impact of climate change on biodiversity, human health, ecosystems etc. ACTIVITY 5 - CREATING WEB-PORTAL - to enable practical use of knowledge and skills gained during the journalist and ecological awareness workshops, and give the young people’s voice in the discussion on climate change issues and other important local issues. ACTIVITY 6 - PROJECT MANAGEMENT - to enable proper implementation of the project aiming at the achievement of results. Additionally, both partners carried out a wide range of promotional and dissemination activities during the project's lifetime.
▶Impact
As a result of the project activities, specific products were created: ENGLISH LANGUAGE WORKSHOP PROGRAM AND TEACHING AIDS focused on media and environmental vocabulary JOURNALISM WORKSHOP PROGRAM AND TEACHING AIDS ECO-AWARENESS WORKSHOP PROGRAM AND TEACHING AIDS WWW.THE4ELEMENTS.EU WEB PORTAL Additional products: E-BOOK about online journalism webinar - based on the case study Additionally the following results achieved: 22 students from Poland and Lithuania extended their language skills by taking part in the first round of language workshops in 2022 and an additional 21 took part in 10.2023 20 students took part in journalism workshops in Poland in 10.2022 and an additional 27 in 10.2023 organized at the national level. They practiced these skills by voluntary “work” for the editorial of the4elements web portal 24 students took part in eco-awareness workshops and increased awareness of the environmental issues 8 teachers developed skills in international cooperation and teaching and mentoring skills partner organizations extended the offer of after-class workshops approx. 6000 people were reached by promotion and dissemination activities.