This is a project poster for a "CLIMATE CHANGE ESCAPE ROOM" project by Sümeyye Kübra Dağlı from Mercidabık Secondary School. The main image shows a hand holding a key with "CLIMATE ACTION" on it, decorated with symbols like a globe, sun, and eco-friendly icons, against a backdrop of wind turbines.
Education for Climate
Escaping Climate Change: How Students Turned Learning into Action
At Mercidabık Secondary School in Kilis, Türkiye, climate education has taken an exciting new form: a Climate Change Escape Room.
This innovative project, co-designed and built by students using recycled materials, transformed climate learning from theory into practice. Instead of reading about sustainability in textbooks, students stepped inside a hands-on, gamified experience where they had to solve puzzles, unlock challenges, and think critically about the causes and consequences of climate change.
Why an escape room?
Because climate change itself is the biggest “escape challenge” humanity faces. By placing students at the center of the game, the project encouraged them to practice collaboration, problem-solving, and systems thinking while also reinforcing key scientific and civic concepts.
Learning by doing
Student-led design: Students collected recycled materials, built the escape room, and created its tasks.
Interdisciplinary learning: The project connected science, citizenship education, and design & technology.
Community involvement: Parents contributed materials, teachers facilitated, and administrators supported—making it a whole-school initiative.
Real impact
Before this project, climate change was often just a topic in the curriculum. Now, students feel ownership of it. Post-project surveys showed increased environmental literacy, with students taking new initiatives such as waste sorting in their classrooms. Their teamwork, confidence, and sense of agency also grew—proof that when education is active, it inspires action.
International recognition
The project’s creativity and impact have also been recognized on a global stage. It was selected among submissions from all around the world in the Creativity in Education competition, organized by the Global Institute of Creative Thinking (GIoCT) in the UK, in collaboration with UNESCO and OECD. With the 2024 theme “Creative Thinking for Climate Action in Education”, our project was awarded a £2,000 grant—a testament to its innovation and global relevance.
A model for others
The Climate Change Escape Room shows how schools can become living labs for sustainability. It bridges science with everyday choices, and demonstrates that when students are empowered as creators, they not only learn better but also change their behavior.
By gamifying climate education, we turned awareness into engagement, and engagement into action. And perhaps most importantly, we proved that learning can be fun, meaningful, and transformative at the same time.
Our next step? To share this model widely, so more schools across Europe can replicate and adapt it—because solving climate change requires creativity, courage, and collective action.
You can watch our project video here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ek5HohmzMc&t=30s
Please log in or sign up to comment.