"<< Background >>Our project ""Make It Greener!"" connects five schools spread across Europe using five mobilities to achieve one goal: bring about the transformation of our schools to make them ""greener"", i.e. more environmentally-friendly and more sustainable.The acronym G.R.E.E.N. stands for ""Growing Responsibly, Enhancing European Network"" and combines the essential ideas behind the project. We strongly believe that we can only bring about a change in environmental awareness together, as a network following the motto ""Think globally, act locally"". The Erasmus+ project can thereby only be a starting point to get expertise, to trigger change. By carrying out this project students will become sustainability experts and green ambassadors, and by establishing green teams in our schools we will ensure the idea of this project to be taken to a wider audience.As teachers, we must educate new generations on the green path and teach them to protect and care for the environment and climate change. We have to be mediators between global and national policies and raise the awareness of our pupils. For this purpose, with our project ""Make it Greener!"" we will try to change the students' and other agents' mindsets and encourage them to take an active role in solving environmental problems, step into the role of a contributor, collaborate on a regular basis with local authorities to plan public events to spread environmental awareness.Within our mobilities we will learn about different aspects of sustainability using a different focus of methodology: Portugal will provide an overview of the topic, zooming in on economic aspects and creating bonds within the community. It will further provide hands-on skills for the upcoming mobilities, e.g. interviewing and filming by addressing 21st-century skills. Slovakia, labelled an Eco-school, will teach us how to become a green school by providing best-practice examples and indicating a pathway towards that goal. Turkey, already an expert on zero waste, will use a creative and critical thinking approach to show where and how we can reduce waste and use water in a sustainable way. Norway, also an Eco-school will address various sustainability aspects with a special focus on sustainable energy for the future and sustainable food consumption. The aim of our project in general is to raise awareness about sustainability and simultaneously gain competence for action. The project sets out to be the beginning of a changing mindset among our students, their families, the teachers and other staff members involved in the project. This can only be done together as a network and by gaining a profound understanding of the matter at hand. Students, as well as teachers, need to acquire knowledge, hands-on methods, multiple and diverse ideas while focusing on different aspects of sustainability in different schools to be able to work towards a sustainable school in the end. The network is also necessary to make a lasting impact by attracting attention, within and outside schools - using eTwinning, a project website, social media, local newspapers, partner organisations such as NGOs, universities, energy providers and environmental associations to reach out to as many people as possible. The Erasmus+ label will further help to spread the world.<< Objectives >>Using our commitment to change our mindsets towards our individual responsibilities for the future, we will raise awareness of green policies. The network of schools and educators will help to change people's attitudes as we need to connect in order to solve the problem on a large scale by learning from each other.We aim to make our students:- Understand the biggest challenges the world has to face regarding its future (one world approach);- Develop critical thinking towards the environment and sustainability;- Identify patterns and behaviours that put sustainability at risk;- Propose and create solutions for problems they observe around them;- Be the spokespeople for this change of mindset;- Take these changes to their homes and communities;- Embrace the commitment to create a better environment.Portugal (ENSINUS ETP - INETE) will give an overview of the topic in the first mobility. The concept of a ""circular economy"" brings an emerging perspective on sustainability creating a new mindset.Slovakia will introduce the topic of “Garbage collecting and recycling” and in the workshop, students will make upcycled goods from collected garbage. As Spojená škola has a Green school title, they will lead the other schools to get the Green school label and prepare an online manual “How to become a green school”.Turkey will provide a comprehensive overview of ""Zero waste and Recycling"" with a focus on issues related to sustainability showing how to prevent water extinction in the near future by changing simple habits, understanding the nature of sustainability and the role of human efforts. Norway as a country that produces a lot of energy, especially oil, gas and the more sustainable water power, will address how we can meet future demands for clean and sustainable energy in a world that craves more and more energy. Moreover, there will be a focus on sustainable food consumption and a focus on how we can help the less fortunate by thinking differently when it comes to food. Thanks to our project ""Make it Greener!"" we will try to change the students' and other agents' mindsets and encourage them to take an active role in solving environmental problems, step into the role of a contributor and collaborate on a regular basis with local authorities to plan public events to spread environmental awareness.<< Implementation >>Each school will be the coach to a specific topic, chosen through a questionnaire applied by all schools, and will lead a transforming process not only in its own community but also in other partners' schools. The project includes 4 learning, teaching, training activities (Norway, Portugal (INETE), Slovakia, Turkey) 2 transnational project meetings (Norway, Portugal) and 1 Multiplier Event (Portugal ISG)Two TPMs have been programmed, each with a different purpose, as kick-off and closure, depending on the progression that is being achieved. Two TPMs, four LTTAs, one ME have also been programmed so that it is the teachers and staff themselves who coordinate the work being carried out, proposing improvements, evaluating the milestones achieved and setting new deadlines accordingly.There are also project virtual activities (webinars via e twinning) and local activities for each school to implement within their organization such as World Environment Day, Celebrating Earth Hour, Bike to school/work everyday activity, Sustainability Days activities, ""World Clean Up Day"" event ,Global Recycling Day"", Celebrating the Earth Day.<< Results >>Students will enhance 21st-century skills like communication and problem-solving skills, feel connected in their commitment, experience self-efficacy by seeing that their action has an impact. When ""Make it Greener"" resources and outputs are integrated into the curricula, it will lead to change in consumption habits, which affect educational outcomes positively. From a wider perspective, it will contribute to the quality of sustainable living and green skills.Teachers will gain more proficiency by working cross-curricular and in different teams, by developing their ICT skills e.g. using eTwinning and they will become sustainability experts to guide future students to a responsible attitude towards consumption. The teachers involved in the project will improve their competences in organizing and executing a complex international project.Participant organisations; With the help of this project, the participating schools will achieve to be more sustainable, learn and implement more ecological and environment-friendly procedures and adopt a greener mindset in their communities. Official organizations and stakeholders can use our schools as examples for any project related to the Environment and Sustainability, or as a starting base for future similar projects.As for tangible results; we will create a Sustainability Kit to be used as a tool for teachers who want to create a sustainable project in their school or in collaboration with other schools. There is an obvious need for us all to live more sustainable lives and to live up to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. The target groups of this toolkit are the students and teachers in our schools, as well as the local communities. In order to create a more green and sustainable future, we need to act locally, while thinking globally.At the end of our project, we will also produce an academic paper where we present the results based on the data we have collected during the project.Overall, the schools will manage to establish a wider network regionally and on a European level, which is needed to make a lasting impact."

The project addresses such problems in the economies and higher education systems of Belarus and Ukraine as marginalized private sector and insufficiency of today approaches in teaching engineering and entrepreneurial culture shaping.The project Goal was to develop an environment that stimulates engineering creativity, entrepreneurial activities and fosters youth employability via university-business-industry networking on FABLAB platforms. Five university fabrication laboratories with innovative equipment have been created in universities of Belarus and Ukraine for implementation of students’ engineering projects. These serve as university-enterprise “meeting points”, opening networking opportunities in both directions. Five training packages including eLearning materials have been developed in English and Russian using the competence-based approach and in accordance with the requirements of the Bologna process. These combine creative engineering and business aspects for building up hard and soft skills of students, trainees, LLL and are based on modern pedagogical approaches. Engineering curricula of respective specialties has been modernized in accordance with the training materials developed.The project created a strong impact on various levels: on the institutional level the fablabs and a data base of e-Learning materials are free to use by students and all the university staff in their daily educational process. On the local, regional and in the wider society these have been included into the fablabs activities via a sustained information campaign involving local printed and electronic media. On the national level development of the network infrastructure for youth innovation entrepreneurship support was facilitated by twinning academia/industry and academia/business through encouragement from national public bodies. At international level a contact network for exchanging good practices, experience sharing and future project implementation has been developed.

The world is losing its wild species and ecosystems at an alarming rate, and Europe is no exception. Yet, biodiversity is the basis for functioning ecosystems, which provide essential goods and services for humans and all other life forms on Earth. We must therefore reverse the trend of BD loss in the foreseeable future, especially by addressing underlying, indirect drivers of biodiversity loss such as consumption patterns, norms and values to achieve double decoupling (of consumption from excessive natural resource use, of satisfaction from consumption). Such transformative change requires social innovation and improved, systemic governance approaches. Additionally, digitalisation and emerging technologies offer potential to support the conservation of biodiversity, increase society well-being and economic prosperity which should be harnessed while reducing their equally existing negative impacts. GoDigiBios aims to support biodiversity-relevant transformative change towards a nature-positive economy and society that will use new digital and other emerging technologies in ways that assist in reversing BD loss. Specifically, GoDigiBioS will deliver i) comprehensive understanding complemented by new insights and operational knowledge of the interactions between biodiversity, social and economic well-being, and technological development, ii) tools to support biodiversity-relevant decision-making, iii) improved, systemic policy mixes and governance approaches. To co-produce these knowledge, tools, and governance approaches, GoDigiBioS will bring together and leverage the knowledge and experience of both researchers and stakeholders from four peri-urban transformation lab regions across Europe and use specific approaches to ensure scalability and replicability of its solutions.