About the Project
Everybody should be conscious of the damage we are causing to our planet: what happens in one part of it is affecting the entire world. Today’s serious problems can be reduced or solved by starting early education in sustainability and environmental issues. In this context the teaching staff is directly responsible for our childrens‘ education. An oriental proverb says:
If you want prosperity for a year, plant some rice. If you want prosperity for ten years, then plant some trees. But if you really want prosperity for a whole life, give education to the new generations.
Aiming at lifelong prosperity, environmental education helps students understand how their decisions and actions affect the environment, builds knowledge and skills necessary to address complex environmental issues, as well as ways we can take action to preserve our environment for future generations.
Project focus
The project focuses on sustainable education from early childhood because learning begins well before school commences. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is the foundation of lifelong learning and all young children up to primary education are entitled to it. The project addresses ECEC and primary education teachers and pedagogical coordinators involved in working with children at kindergarten and primary schools.
The indirect target audiences are children aged from 3 to 6 and 7 to 11 years, schools and other educational institutions, experts in the field of environmental and values education, organizations and associations of experts, policy makers and decision makers like regional/national authorities and the general public, to raise their the awareness of the importance of environmental and values education starting from early childhood as a key to build a better world to live in.
ELVE has been designed according to a logical framework approach in which the pursued objectives will be achieved by specific activities that may lead to planned results.
Project objectives
- Implementing a transnational curriculum for ECEC and primary education teachers;
- Designing innovative open educational resources (OER) that develop and promote innovative learning approaches for ECEC and primary school teachers
- Developing a handbook for ECEC and primary school teachers explaining clearly the proposed model of environmental learning based on values education; – Creating an innovative knowledge hub for informing, uploading and downloading OER materials
- Promoting the development of the ELVE network to increase the project outreach and raise the awareness of using environmentally and inclusive approaches in kindergarten and primary schools supporting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
Consortium
The consortium of ELVE is formed by 6 project partners from 5 different EU countries which come from a wide range of backgrounds including the World Association of Early Childhood education, universities, training, research and development centers and associations, and SMEs. ELVE is in full alignment with the priorities, objectives and aims of the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnerships call for Schools as it envisions in 3-6 and 7-11 teachers up-skilling and provision of transversal skills, providing access to Open Educational Resources based on ICT, link continuous education and training and implement awareness campaigns.