Local Spaces - Special Places - Our commitment to a better future.

Our partnership Local Spaces - Special Places - Our commitment to a better future, (Our World - Don’t waste it!), focuses on the special places each of our schools have in our localities and that if we don't care for them then pollution and climate change could dramatically alter them for future generations. We all have the same issues such as plastic, paper and emission waste that impacts these places.Our schools are from different countries and different situations: small, large, rural, urban. All include mixture of pupils from different social, ethnic and migrant communities, and pupils with special educational needs. Due to our differences in locality but similarities in threats, we plan to collaborate on what we are doing to protect these spaces for the future. The project will also include collaboration with our wider whole school communities, local educational networks, organisations, and small businesses. The project includes partners who have a proven track record of working together on previous Comenius and Erasmus plus projects, with a wealth of experience and expertise in international projects.We all recognise that we are living in changing and challenging situations in today's changing modern world. Our pupils are growing up in a world with many complex conflicts and environmental issues with very real problems with climate change and sustainability.Our project allows our schools and wider communities to work together to investigate and study these issues. We aim that through this project we will all learn and make changes, allowing us to integrate effective and sometimes modern practices which will sustainably have a positive change on schools and local communities and make our local spaces - special places a better place for future generations. We want to engage with our future generations so as to enable them to make positive change now and in the future as lifelong learners and citizens of Europe and the wider world. The funding of this project will enable staff and students to travel to partner countries and schools to work together on shared projects and experience first-hand life language culture and attitudes in places other than their own. We view this as paramount and extremely important for young people who may not otherwise of had the opportunity to travel or to meet other people and fully understand the diversity of the multi-cultural, multi-faceted modern Europe in which we all exist. The project allows all our schools and wider communities the opportunity to undertake exciting and motivating cross curricular work and experiences, allowing the development and facilitation of learning new skills that will sustainably impact on what is happening in our own and other locations across the globe. The ability of these experiences to have a positive impact upon school attainment and progress in numerous areas across schools curriculum through collaborative work is another sustainable positive of this innovative project. We aim to achieve fundamental changes in attitudes and lifestyles concerning the impact our decisions and choices are having upon our valued local spaces. We will develop understanding of programmes that are having positive development on the environment within all our localities. There will be positive cross curricular teaching and learning throughout the project, with partners, pupils and staff all sharing ideas and research, working collaboratively online and face to face during mobilities. We will use online resources such as British Council's Zero Waste. Our work will be showcased on school websites and in digital newsletters Our objectives are for all our school communities to have an enhanced positive understanding of their local spaces - special places and respect for them . Respect in terms of themselves, others and the environment. We aim to develop critical thinking, by providing experiences of problem solving in a real life context, e.g. what impact does plastic waste have on our spaces? What do we do with all our waste? how can we improve life on our planet for everyone? We will enable school communities to think about creative solutions to these issues. Ultimately this project will produce long term developmental changes in terms of all school communities, engineering the development of active citizenship where all schools and wider linked bodies begin to recognise the impacts their choices have on the sustainable development of the local spaces - special places that they sometimes take for granted.