Last year in Montenegro, four schools got together to collaborate on an ambitious project in order to increase the students’ knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Story provided by Olivera Lučić – Nikšić, Montenegro
The four schools implemented many different activities to raise awareness about the SDGs. They produced T-shirts, posters, brochures, and flyers to get the word around. They made a teacher-competition where they awarded the teachers who successfully had implemented the SDGs in their own subjects through collaboration and teamwork.
They also created a web platform for students with Green Challenges in different categories like Water, Food, Waste, Fashion, Health and more. The students participating in the challenge collected points in the different categories and were asked to document their initiatives through photographs and videos. A three-member jury chose the winners in each of the different categories.
In order to create “Green Classrooms”, some of the students at the schools also made benches for the courtyard out of recyclable materials, planted indigenous trees, flowers, and creepers to provide a nice setting for outdoor classes.
To spread the word about the initiatives in the four schools and encourage other schools to do the same, the project team created an online application form for all interested elementary and secondary schools. This resulted in more than 30 teachers and about 600 students from across the country being involved in the “A Green Challenge for Everyone” project.
A computer science teacher from one of the involved schools describes the project like this:
““This project creates educational content for primary and secondary school students to be prepared for new social and environmental challenges in the future and to make important life and business decisions. It is of great importance to create such educational content for primary and secondary school students who are in a period of life when they receive the most information on a daily basis, which they need to integrate into their daily activities, and on which the further development of them as individuals, as well as the society in which they operate, depends most”. ”
The sustainability awareness created by the project also spread to the community surrounding the schools. The students showed great interest in transferring their responsibility and knowledge about their impact on the environment to their families and the wider community.