Collaboration between private and state schools within the arena of sustainability in education is rare, but vital. Our Climate Solutions Conference has Learning Communities at its heart, to provide a range of non-formal and formal learning opportunities for students and educators, across languages and education sectors. This CSC was organised by students, for students, but included stakeholders at all levels, with sessions offered by students (e.g. adolescent psychology and the green transition), educators, NGOs, businesses and politicians. This participatory project design provides a replicable framework for others to follow, to enhance collaborative exploratory thinking and problem-framing but also, as our carefully chosen conference name suggests, solutions-seeking and networking to ensure the solutions ideas bear fruit.
The keynote message is one of empowerment, to enable young people (and indeed all stakeholders) to know that they have agency, that they are the change-makers, and that solutions are all provided by people like themselves. The conference builds around a framework of sessions, beginning with the individual, widening to school solutions, extending to wider community solutions, before returning in to establish individual responsibility to take these ideas further.
During the conference, attendees develop green skills and competencies, further understanding of the issues, alongside motivating good news stories of the green transition so far.
Our aim to is connect education actors in a more integrated approach, across social and linguistic divides towards one common goal, leveraging the multiplicity of engaged groups to provide a dynamic and fun (yes, games, bbq and marshmallows were also an important part of this conference!) approach to capacity building for local learning communities.
We will repeat this in 2025 to coincide with Earth Day with collaborative events across involved schools.
Wow looks supercool! we (FoodEducators) would love to take part.
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