Focus week: The green revolution
Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues of our time. This also goes for programmes such as Erasmus+, especially in light of the European Commission’s goal to achieve a climate-neutral economy in Europe by 2050. But what about the potential and opportunities that Erasmus+ offers in this context? In July 2024, a page was set up on the NA at BIBB website (National Agency Education for Europe at the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training) to provide information on this very topic. It brings together initiatives for ecological sustainability and environmental protection as well as innovative projects and ideas.
“Our aim is to show how present ‘Green Erasmus’ already is in many projects today,” says Satiye Sarigöz, sustainability officer at the NA at BIBB. She adds: “The best way to do this is to present specific projects and illustrate how they bring the idea to life.” This is exactly what the new topic page does. It uses examples to show how stakeholders can ‘green up’ their projects ‒ often with simple measures ‒ and why Green Erasmus concerns us all.
Sarigöz emphasises that there are many good reasons for a sustainable Erasmus+. Linking education, mobility and sustainability actively contributes to achieving the targets of the EU’s action plan The European Green Deal. The Deal aims to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to decouple economic growth from resource use. To this end, it will mobilise around 100 billion euros in the most affected regions of Europe, with a particular view to protecting biodiversity and forests, managing waste and recycling and safeguarding water.
Providing inspiration for change
But not only that: The solutions tested and disseminated as part of Green Erasmus+ motivate people to follow suit and demonstrate how mobility and education programmes can be implemented in an environmentally sustainable way. In this way, Green Erasmus+ inspires participants to get involved in climate protection and to bring about positive changes in their own lives and in society. Networking educational projects also helps to actively tackle the challenges of climate change, while sustainable principles are integrated into educational content, job profiles and curricula. The result: Sustainability becomes anchored in the educational landscape long term.
For Satiye Sarigöz, there is another advantage to Erasmus+: Different countries and cultures work together towards a sustainable future by sharing ideas, best practices and solutions. This opens up new ways of learning and sensitises people to innovative technologies and business models. In this respect, sustainability can also increase economic value for those involved.
Learning sustainability through play: the GoBeEco project
The GoBeEco project illustrates how inspiring practical examples can be. Through gamification, it playfully encourages adult learners to examine their habits and lifestyles from a sustainability perspective and to change themselves and the society in which we live. The background to this is that many people have recognised the need for change and are, in principle, prepared to act. The challenge, however, is how to translate this understanding into long-term and sustainable action.
Undertaking so-called ‘missions’ ‒ whether in public spaces, at work or at home, in the act of consuming or discovering one’s own ‘green path’ ‒ GoBeEco brings sustainability home as something real and tangible. One advantage of the learning app is that it can be used both individually and in lessons. An accompanying digital handbook also provides teachers with tools to encourage critical thinking and promote teamwork and cooperation.
GoBeEco was developed as part of a cooperation project completed in 2023 under the leadership of the University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule des Mittelstands, FHM) in Bielefeld. The project partners came from Poland, Portugal and Germany. “I think bringing sustainability into everyday life through play is an excellent approach,” says Prof Dr Volker Wittberg, Vice-Rector for Research & Development at the University of Applied Sciences (FHM) in Bielefeld and the project’s scientific director. Elisa Goldmann, research associate at the Centre for Sustainable Governance (CSG) at the University of Applied Sciences, holds a similar view. She emphasises: “We are proud to have delivered this project, as it has brought about a lot of change within and outside our organisations and has driven the issue home in the minds of our lecturers.”
For Goldmann, sustainability is not just a trend, but a necessity that we must all address. But it should also be fun. Goldmann adds: “That’s the idea behind the project. We don’t want to encourage people to do without, but rather show them in a fun way what options they have and what can be achieved ‒ also economically ‒ through sustainability. In this way, we want to make the topic tangible and motivate those involved.”
For example, when it comes to saving energy: The task here is to check which appliances in your house or flat are already in energy-saving mode. Users are incentivised to make the most of the situation and realise that this is also a money matter. The thrust of it is: I can even save money by switching off devices that I have hardly used in the last two months and by not leaving them in standby mode all the time.
“To demonstrate this kind of thing, we use methods that are very ‘hip’, especially in the target group of learners, such as Insta or TikTok challenges,” explains Elisa Goldmann. She also believes that innovative learning opportunities are generally well utilised, at least by committed teachers. The project has had very positive experiences in this regard. So much so that a follow-up project called Shift2Green has now been created, which applies the GoBeEco idea to vocational training. One of the reasons for this was the feedback that companies also need this kind of impetus to help employees become more sustainable and think more actively about certain processes. (https://shift2green.eu/)
Best practices in various key areas
“GoBeEco is an excellent example of how innovative forms of learning can have an impact. It combines the new forms of learning with the issue of sustainability without being moralistic,” summarises Elisa Goldmann in conclusion. In the collection of ideas on the NA at BIBB website, the project appears as an example in the section ‘Communicating sustainability innovatively’. There are also a large number of other best practices categorised as ‘Rethinking and practising climate protection’, ‘Supporting social and ecological transformation’, ‘New ecological learning spaces’ and ‘Shaping a sustainable economy’.
Last but not least, the question of travel also plays an important role in all of this. The website provides important information on green travel and illustrates how environmentally friendly mobility can be implemented in Erasmus+. Erasmus+ supports such approaches by offering bigger travel grants and more funded travel days.
More information on Green Erasmus+ and a collection of ideas with example projects can be found at https://www.na-bibb.de/themen/green-erasmus.
Photo in the article: FHM,
Photo teaser: jittawit.21 | AdobeStock
