Green School

WHERE 

Lombardy, Metropolitan Area of Rome, Province of Livorno, Metropolitan Area of Cagliari and Aosta Valley Region
 

CONTEXT

The Green School Italia Programme was established with the aim of extending to five Italian regions an educational model already well consolidated in Lombardy, where it has engaged over 600 schools of all levels. The programme supports schools in promoting sustainable development and adopting good environmental practices, contributing to the reduction of their carbon footprint and encouraging responsible and virtuous behaviours among students, families and local communities.
Over more than thirteen years of activity, the project has progressively refined its tools and methodologies, also thanks to the contribution of research institutions involved in the partnership. This process gave rise to the Green School Method, which provides schools with accessible tools for calculating their carbon footprint and with operational and educational resources to strengthen knowledge, competencies and approaches in the field of education for sustainable development.
Green School Italia starts from schools but extends to communities, activating processes of transformation within the social, economic and associative fabric of the territories involved. Schools thus become spaces for co-design and innovation, capable of fostering community education pacts and concrete shared sustainability actions.
The programme also includes a modular training pathway for teachers, aimed at deepening the content of the 2030 Agenda and strengthening the competencies needed to integrate global citizenship and sustainability education into school curricula.

OBJECTIVES

General objective
To contribute to the development and strengthening of a concept of "citizenship" understood as belonging to the global community, pragmatically supporting individual and collective change towards the creation of a more sustainable and just world.

Specific objective
To improve understanding of the challenges posed by climate change and the sustainability of development processes among students, teachers and citizens, fostering the adoption of sustainable lifestyle practices through local workshops for sustainable development in the communities of the territories involved.

ACTIVITIES

• Review of carbon footprint calculation tools and the school interface of the green-school.it website
• Development of educational and didactic tools
• Modular training pathway for teachers
• Support for the introduction of sustainable good practices in schools, monitoring of the impacts of behavioural changes, and assignment of the Green School recognition
• Establishment of a permanent dialogue forum on sustainable school programmes
• Creation of territorial networks for education for sustainable development
• Launch of participatory design workshops for local sustainable development actions in the territories involved

RESULTS

Knowledge on sustainable development, global citizenship and climate change has been disseminated across at least 300 school sites in five Italian regions, with the active involvement of students and school staff in the adoption of good practices and behaviours oriented towards producing concrete results for sustainable development at local and global level.
Local educational practices and policies have been improved and integrated by territorial authorities through the exchange of experiences, the creation of networks, and the activation of local projects on education for sustainable development, global citizenship and sustainability.

BENEFICIARIES

Direct: 5,186 students, 537 teachers, 47 public and private organisations active in the field of environmental sustainability in the territories involved, which collaborated with schools towards achieving the certification.
Indirect: approximately 20,030 people

PARTNERS

Province of Varese (lead organisation), Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, Metropolitan City of Cagliari, Agenda 21 Laghi – Municipality of Laveno Mombello (VA), University of Insubria, University of Parma – CIREA, Azienda Ambientale di Pubblico Servizio (AAMPS) of Livorno, Istituto OIKOS Onlus, ASIA Onlus, CAST ONG Onlus, Associazione EFYS, Cooperativa Brikke Brakke, Cooperativa Erica

PROJECT FUNDED BY

Italian Agency for Development Cooperation