A New Horizontal Theme in Adult and Vocational Education
To fight climate change we must first know all about it!
By now, we all know the inconvenient truth about climate change: it’s here, and its impact is huge. But there is little use in dwelling on the past, or even the present. It’s tomorrow that interests us. A tomorrow with sustainable communities, that will not make the same mistake twice.
It’s up to all of us to build that new sustainable society. So it’s mandatory that we start by making people aware of how their actions impact the Earth. We must fully understand what our footprint really is. Only then we can start doing things differently and create a Climate Literate Society.
In short, we want everybody to :
- understand how our climate works
- know how to distinguish fact from fiction
- talk about climate in a meaningful way
- make informed and responsible decisions
How can we do this?
We can’t expect everybody to go back to school to learn about climate change. So we will have to invent new ways of learning, easily accessible to everybody, and powerful enough to get the message across.
Step one: climate literacy app
Raising awareness starts by keeping score by means of an app. So let’s show people how their actions are actually impacting the climate, and how they relate to their friends and neighbours. Let’s bring a climate-scorecard to plenty of everyday actions to get people to understand the reality.
Step two: social learning network
Keeping score alone is not enough. We have to follow up these numbers with an educational platform. A tool by means of which people from all over Europe can find information, inform themselves about climate, and are encouraged to engage in communities that undertake actions to reduce their footprints.
Social learning is proving its merits in companies all over the world, thanks to its project-based approach and authentic learning opportunities.
Result: a true bottom-up approach
The finger-wagging approach doesn’t work. Change has to come from within. But that is only possible through gradual understanding of the real issues. And that is precisely what this project creates: climate literate people who take the matter into their own hands.
More information is available on the project website: climate-literacy.eu/en/ or have a look at our YouTube video.
