“CLIC – Climate and Citizenship”

Project Description

Covid-19 pandemic has proved once again the strong relationship between human being and the environment, highlighting the urgency to take actions and to increase young people’s awareness and knowledge on the effects of anthropic impact on climate change, individual and collective health. The pandemic showed the close connection between Northern and Southern parts of the world and the so-called butterfly effect.

Working with students and teachers, both in-and-out of school, is a crucial step in fostering knowledge and skills on these issues and filling the gaps regarding:

– the lack of knowledge of the impacts of climate change among students, especially in lower and upper secondary schools;

– the lack of opportunities for active citizenship experiences both inside and outside schools:

– the difficulties for teachers to plan and implement Civic Education on global citizenship issues starting from the focus on climate change due to the lack of ad hoc training;

– the need to innovate teaching methodologies;

– the need for a better coordination with the stakeholders in charge of environmental education.

“CLIC – Climate and Citizenship” is a two-year project with the objective of making young students aware of the risks and the effects of climate change on individual and community health and of making them able to commit themselves for environmental sustainability.

The foreseen activities of the project are implemented both on-line at national level and in presence all around Italy, in the cities of Milan, Busto Arsizio, Saronno, Palermo, Rome, Brindisi, and Lecce.

The project stems from Fondazione l’Albero della Vita’s experience in global citizenship education and is implemented by a solid and heterogeneous consortium of partners with strong expertise: two companies – WeSchool S.r.l. (leader in the e-Learning sector for students and teachers) and Round Robin S.r.l. (publishing house), ARPA Lombardia (Regional Agency for the Environmental Protection); Il Sole Onlus (NGO), Demostene Centro Studi, Terra! and Bayty Baytik (non-profit associations committed in global citizenship education and international cooperation).

The action is focused on three clusters of activities:

1) Develop and implement through the collaboration with WeSchool an innovative teaching and e-learning path to learn and develop skills to act against climate change with sustainable actions.

2) Provide, in collaboration with Demostene Centro Studi, to upper secondary students with tools and methods of active citizenship and civic engagement to carry out civic monitoring of the local administration activities and their impact on the territories.

Develop and organize workshops for teachers, in collaboration with ARPA Lombardia, on the functioning of the public environmental monitoring and on the opportunities of active citizenship for the schools.

3) Improve students’ skills to act as agents of change with their peers through non-formal education activities such as storytelling, creation of graphic novel, social reading, and public debate in fairs, libraries and bookshops. The publishing house Round Robin guides and supports the students in this process together with the other partners.

The project foresees to reach directly 11.000 students and 700 teachers.