Background
Sustainability strives to foster protection of the planet and to ensure prosperous development of all living in it, today and in the future. Since the emergence of the concept of “sustainability” that covers economic, environmental and social aspects, it has been deeply rooted in the worldwide development policies. It culminated in 2015, when all countries of the world endorsed the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Looking at problems like climate change, it is obvious that we need to speed up the process of change.
The project “Sustainability Coaches” focuses on two major aspects on the way to sustainability:
1) Education: Education develops awareness, knowledge and understanding for sustainability and empowers people to be active for an ecological and just transformation. Innovative methods and tools and the diversity of perspectives can support the process. This is where the project focuses with the educational material that will be developed. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is not new, but changes are still very small. We need aware and informed, courageous and creative citizens. The concept of ESD used in the past is a good basis, but it needs to be supplemented with new approaches and methods to empower people for action. This also confirms the current UNESCO roadmap “ESD for 2030”, which aims to implement the SDGs, speaks of transformative education and wants to activate all citizens to participate.
2) International cooperation: Today the world is facing GLOBAL challenges and a collective effort to achieve sustainability is necessary. The Agenda 2030 and the SDGs state that international cooperation and partnerships are integral for sustainability. Sharing common principles for sustainable development between citizens, stakeholders, governments and institutions is essential. Furthermore, it is important to make global interconnections and different perspectives visible. ESD still has a lack of diverse perspectives over all from people outside Europe, even though these help to understand global interdependencies and to develop innovative ideas for sustainability.
Objectives
The main objective of the project is to provide trainers and multipliers (e.g. adult educators, NGO workers, people working in community outreach) with knowledge, skills and competences to become “Sustainability Coaches”. They shall then accompany, motivate and inspire their target groups for local sustainable action, having global societies in mind (think global – act local).
Implementation
- Development of project results (“Curriculum for sustainability coaches”, “The Sustainability Game”, “Online Platform on Sustainability”)
- Organization of local local workshops on eduation for sustainable development – Organization of multiplier events (physical + virtual)
- Delivery of training teaching activities
- Organization and participation in transnational project meetings
- Dissemination activities
- Monitoring and evaluation
Results
For the training of the trainers and for their work with their target groups the consortium will develop a pedagogical and didactical set of educational tools, that can be found mainly in the following main results:
1) The “Curriculum for Sustainability Coaches”, that will contain didactical information for the trainers, as well as information and concrete tools on different aspects of sustainability and possibilities to become active for change.
2) The “Sustainability Game”, an educational game that enables users to analyse real situations and challenges in a given society and try to find sustainable solutions or improvements for the challenges.
3) The interactive “Online Platform on Sustainability”, that will present the content and tools of the curriculum, the game and a set of online training modules, including texts, quizzes and videos that can be used individually online – separately or as a course.