From the Arctic to the Tropics : Building Sustainable Bridges with Erasmus+

Our newest Erasmus+ project, "From the Arctic to the Tropics : Building Sustainable Bridges with Erasmus+", started in October 2022. Our partners in this project are Laanila High School and Lycée Antoire De Saint-Exupéry in La Reunion, and the project is about one month student exchanges between these schools.

First exchange students came to Finland in October 2022. For our school we got Marius and Cyril. Their host brothers Joakim and Henrik introduced them some Finnish culture and traditions. Among other things they met the one and only Santa Claus, tried ice swimming and went ice skating.

   Marius and Cyril's very first school day at SPSU

   Host family meeting

   Classmates in SPSU

   At the end of the exchange Marius and Cyril got their certificates for participation

In November they all travelled together to La Reunion where it was Marius and Cyril's turn to share their every day life with our boys. Our teacher Eva together with Laanila teachers travelled with them and spent the first week with them. 

   First touch with La Reunion

   First school day

   Le jardin des tortues

   Diving 

     A visit to the volcano

    Certificates on the beach

    In April 2023 it was time for the second exchange. Isabel and Fia together with teacher Johanna and  team Laanila travelled to La Reunion. They had a 10-hour layover in Paris and had time to explore the city. Finally at La Reunion, the whole group was warmly welcomed by the host families. 

   Exploring Paris

    Meeting the host sisters

During the first week there was a host family meeting by the beach, mutual activities at the school, an excursion to an amazing waterfall and to top it all of, paragliding above the paradise island.

    Host family picnic

    An excursion to the waterfall

    Just amazing!

In the beginning of May, our students and the Reunionise exchange students will come to Finland. Then it is Eléa and Cecilias turn to get to know SPSU and the Finnish culture.

   Eléa (second from the left back row) and Cecilia (left in first row) are coming to SPSU in May

So far this long-term exchange has been very fruitful and exciting experience for all of the participants. Of course during the stays this long there's always cultural differences and surprises, but at the end these are the things that teach us the most and are the salt of this all. We are really grateful for this opportunity to both learn about the Reunionise culture and to show our Finnish specialities to our guests. Together we learn from each other!

International Day of Peace

The International Day of Peace is observed around the world each year on 21 September. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace. (Source: internationaldayofpeace.org)

In our school, we celebrated the Peace Day with a morning assembly and theme day with peace related clothing. Everybody had also ability to make their own peace sign and hang it on the wall.

Project Result

Now that the Erasmus+ project Stepping Up to the Sustainable Development Goals is over, it's time to look back. What did we achieve? What did we learn? What did we experience? Did we reach the goals?

At the beginning of the project, in August 2019 we wrote in this blog (quoting Tiina Fredriksson from Laanila High School):

The aim of the project is not only to introduce UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals to all our students, teachers, staff, and whole school community, but also to ambitiously implement a cornucopia of best practice by uniting our European schools in action. 

During the three-year-project we will introduce all the 17 Global Goals, focus on four of them and "create an army of goalkeepers” who will spread the change-choices even broader within our countries and Societies. 

 The objectives are to develop pedagogy for critical thinking to equip students to research and actively work towards tackling the following four SDGs whilst developing critical thinking, communication, digital literacy, and foreign language skills: 

Goal 1: Poverty 

Goal 8: Decent Work 

Goal 12: Responsible Consumption 

Goal 14: Ocean Pollution 

 

Partners: 

"Laanila High School", Oulu, Finland (coordinator)

"Svenska Privatskolan i Uleåborg", Oulu, Finland

"Lycée Antoine St-Exupéry", Les Avirons, La Reunion 

"Escuela sa de Miranda", Braga, Portugal 

"IES Juan Antonio Fernandez Perez", Melilla, Spain "Ysgol Dyffryn Taf", Whitland, Wales 

 

As we all know, the pandemic mixed up even our plans and the project didn't actualize as originally planned. Luckily, we were able to work together and even travel to see all the actions within the project in real life.

Our project started with a logo competition. We got some excellent candidates to send to Melilla, where we’d vote for the project logo. At the very beginning we also printed all the Agenda 2030 goals as posters on the wall for everybody to see them.

Next activity was a plogging event with our neighbor high school OSYK. The event was so fun, and our cooperation worked so well that we have continued participating OSYK’s plogging events and organized our own events.

In October 2019 we sent two students to La Reunion for two-months exchange, and in November 2021 we received two of their students to our school for a month. All the students that were involved learned a lot about other cultures and local issues concerning sustainability. They also improved their language skills.

In November 2019 we had a meeting in Melilla, in November 2021 in La Reunion, in February 2022 in Finland, and finally in April 2022 in Portugal. In the meetings we learned about the local actions, solutions, challenges, and projects within the framework of sustainability. We made new friends, learned new languages, got inspired, and experienced new things together. After the trips, the participating students had presentations and talked about their experiences to the other students and teachers in the school. We also made a new exhibition in our glass vitrine after every meeting to show everybody in the school what we’d learned.

We started to participate in the Finnish Red Cross’ Hunger Day collection already before this project started, and we have continued participating during all these years. Every autumn, we take our first-year students to collect money in the streets of Oulu. All the donations go to the catastrophe fund to help people in need. Under this project we also organized a Joulupuu collection (Christmas Tree) to gather Christmas gifts to the kids in less fortunate families, and a charity event to help the people of Ukraine.

Other actions besides everyday routines with reducing food waste and saving electricity and water, have been investing in well-being, gender equality, peace, and love to the nature. We have organized theme days, nature trips and hikes to evoke feelings.

The best part of all of this has been working together for the better future. We have found comfort in the fact that we are not alone, and together we can make a huge difference.

Introducing Agenda 2030 to all the students and whole school community ✅

Showing our best practices within the sustainability and learning from others ✅

Developing critical thinking ✅

Communication ✅

Foreign language skills ✅

Digital literacy ✅

 

Helping the people of Ukraine

We were thinking about different ways to help the people in Ukraine, and decided to contribute in our own way. On a sunny Monday afternoon we organized a charity flea market and waffle sale in the school yard. 

The event was a succes, and we collected 258 euros to donate to the victims of the war.

Meeting in Braga 2022

The whole Erasmus team on the stairs of Escola Sá de Miranda

In April 2022 we had the very last meeting of the project "Stepping Up to the Sustainable Development Goals" in Braga. To our joy all the partners could participate this meeting. 

For us Finns the journey started early on the Easter Sunday morning. We travelled via Amsterdam to Porto where we met the other students and teachers and took bus to Braga together. The host families and the local teachers were already waiting for us.

At Oulu Airport 4 AM: Ready to go!

Meeting the teams Spain, La Reunion and Wales at the airport of Porto

Meeting local host sisters and brothers

On Monday the school was closed because of the Easter holidays, so we had an excursion to Porto. First, we had a guided tour on the port area, Porto De Leixões. Then we visited the Cruise Terminal and the ocean research center CIIMAR that is located in the same buildning. 

Porto De Leixões

Research center CIIMAR

On the rooftop of Cruise Terminal

After the visit we had a lunch break and nice cruise on a boat along the river Douro. We ended the trip with a visit to a port wine cellar Cálem, where the guide told us about the history of port wine. 

The weather was sunny, and when you found a spot that the wind couldn't reach, the temperature was nice and warm.

 

Beautiful banks of Porto

Boat trip

On Tuesday we had a welcome ceremony at the City Hall by the mayor of the town. After the visit we had a walk around the city center and the cathedral. 

Meeting Mayor

Cathedral of Braga

Students

Teachers

After the lunch at the school, we had the welcome ceremony in the school's theatre, and all the students had their presentations that they had prepared for the trip. The topic of the presentations was "Seas/Oceans around us". 

School lunch

Jemina, Linnea, Erin and Sofia having their presentation

Here you can see our presentation:

Braga presentation 

On Wednesday we hopped on a bus again and drove to the coast of Esposende. First, we had a walk along the river with a guide who told us about the vegetation and animals living in the area. The walk led to the sand dunes and to the beach.  The weather was windy but sunny, and it was nice to walk on the beach.

Walk along the shore and on the beach

We ate picnic lunch in a nice forest, and afterwards visited also Nau Quinhentista, a typical boat from the 16th century. 

In the evening we had a concert at the school by Braga Traditional Cordophone Orchestra. It was very entertaining, and we also learned a lot about typical Portuguese instruments.

Thursday morning students had presentations about themselves, their schools and their countries in different classes. Afterwards we all visited the School Museum and the School Garden. Both were really interesting, especially the garden with its own deer!

The school yard of Escola Sá de Miranda

Deer in the School Garden

School Museum

After lunch we had two workshops: Genially and arts. Genially is a tool for making interactive content online. Our long term students had earlier created a virtual escape room with the tool, and we continued the work by adding some more tasks. In art workshop we painted colourful fishes that became fridge magnets.

You can play our escape room here. (It works better with computer than mobile phone.)

Art workshop

Friday morning, we had a lecture about Ocean protection by captain Nuno Marinho. After that, the students went to classes again and the teachers had meeting.

Captain Nuno Marinho with his mother, teacher Laura

After the lunch it was time for farewell ceremony where everybody got their diplomas for participating the program. We also got a surprise: to remember 25th of April the local students had prepared a short drama play and we all got red carnations.

Team Melilla, Spain

Team Wales

Team La Reunion

Team Portugal

Team SPSU

Team Laanila

Remembering 25th April

After the official program we had opportunity to visit Bom Jesus. We choose to hop on a cable train that took us up to the hill and saved us from climbing all the 577 steps. The views were amazing and the whole site is just unbelievably beautiful. 

It was again a wonderful week and great ending for the whole project. We really hope that in the future we can continue our cooperation with these amazing partners that have become more like family members during all these years.