A special meeting at the Municipality of Chalandri
Today, April 24, 2024, a unique meeting took place in the conference room of the Chalandri Municipal Council!
Students from three junior high schools in the Municipality of Chalandri represented their teams and engaged in a dialogue with their Municipality about their experiences from the experiential workshops that Community Energy River has implemented with them as part of the projects “The school community protects the climate” and “Sustainability and energy use Athens-Berlin”. The discussion took place in the presence of the Deputy Mayor for Technical Services, Elena Christouli, the Deputy Mayor for Education and Citizen Service Centers, Efthymios Kourasis, the municipality’s engineer, Kostis Masouras, Deputy Mayor for Culture Christina Machaira, Deputy Mayor for Civil Protection and Environment Haris Mavroudis, and Municipal Council President Tania Karagianni.
The “School Community Protects the Climate” project includes eight experiential workshops and aims to raise awareness among the school community about climate change, energy efficiency, democracy, and energy communities, and to encourage students themselves to take action to raise awareness.
This is an educational program for environmental awareness and democratic education implemented by Community Energy River in collaboration with ANTIGONE -Information and Documentation Center for Racism, Ecology, Peace, and Nonviolence, with funding from the Heinrich Boell Foundation.
This year, only the Municipality of Chalandri in Attica and the Municipality of Neapolis -Sykeon in Thessaloniki from the rest of Greece because these municipalities have taken steps towards the country’s energy transition, and in fact the Municipality of Chalandri is moving forward with the creation of the first energy community in Greece in which a municipality in the urban fabric will cooperate with citizens, all having equal rights.
At the 8th and 7th Gymnasium, in the workshop they held on energy communities, the students created their own imaginary energy communities. They jointly decided on the community’s goals and the activities needed to achieve them.
The “Sustainability and Energy Use Athens -Berlin” project is an Erasmus+ 2024-2025 program that has been implemented since January 2024 in schools and educational institutions and is aimed at primary and secondary school students and teachers (Smaller Partnerships in School Education program number 2023-2-DE03-KA210-SCH-000183361). The program includes workshop modules for students on climate change and energy conservation. The main objective of the actions and educational material of the program “Sustainability and Energy Use Athens-Berlin” is to raise awareness and empower the school community about sustainability, especially regarding energy use in the school building, where the school building functions as a living learning space.
At the 4th High School of Chalandri, on the occasion of the parallel integration of the building into an energy upgrade program, a pilot workshop on “participatory design for the energy upgrade of the school building” was held, lasting 3 hours, with the participation of the Municipality and experts who worked together with the group of students. In this workshop, ideas for reducing the school building’s carbon footprint were discussed.
The “Sustainability and Energy Use Athens-Berlin” project is implemented by Community Energy River in Athens and the organizations Respect for Greece, the BNE-Zentrum Environmental Education Center, and the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues in Berlin.
At today’s workshop, the students shared their experiences and suggestions from the energy tour they did in their school building. They reported on the condition of the school buildings, the problems they recorded during their energy tour, and proposed their own ideas for saving energy and reducing their school’s carbon footprint.
The school community was represented by:
Students:
From the 8th Gymnasium: Dimitra Alevisou, Katerina Papoutsi, and Nikolas Damoulos
From the 7th Gymnasium: Sofia Peskelidi, Maximos Raisis, and Konstantina Potetsianaki
From the 4th Gymnasium: Giannis Meletis and Ioanna Kyriakogona
The 8th Gymnasium was also represented by the school newspaper team.
Teachers:
From the 8th Gymnasium: Fotis Danaskos and Evangelia Manologlou (deputy headmistress)
From the 7th Gymnasium: Dimitra Spiliopoulou and Ioannis Dermatas (headmaster)
From the 4th Gymnasium: Efi Exakoustidou (principal) and Glykeria Pournara
Also present was Maria Dimopoulou, Head of Environmental Education, Directorate of Primary Education, Athens, Coordinator of the Local Network of Schools for the Climate.
The following representatives were present at the two programs:
Agapi Tsambazi from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Thessaloniki and Reiner Schiller-Dickhut from the Respect for Greece association in Berlin, Wolfgang Schwarz from the BNE-Zentrum environmental education center, and Florian Kliche and Jorg Ackermann from the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues in Berlin.
The resources for the eight workshops on “The school community protects the climate” held at the three schools were provided by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and, thanks to the Erasmus+ program “Sustainability and Energy Use Athens-Berlin,” the participatory planning workshop at the 4th Gymnasium and the school community’s discussion with the municipality on April 24 were co-funded by the European Union.
Representing the implementing body of these programs, Community Energy River, were Maya Moschandreou, Electrical Engineer and Actress, Head of Educational Programs, and Fay Ioannidou, Head of Communications and Facilitator of Educational Programs. The workshops at the three schools were also conducted by the team’s trainers, Artemis Dourou and Natassa Spinthouraki.
A surprise from Community Energy River:
Η ομάδα Cosmic φ, που δραστηριοποιείται σε σχολικές αυλές με στόχο την αειφορια, προσφέρθηκε να πραγματοποιήσει μια επίσκεψη γνωριμίας και σύνδεσης με τα σχολεία που συμμετέχουν στο πρόγραμμα. Οι μαθητές και οι μαθήτριες θα πάρουν δώρο και ένα φυτό για το μπαλόνι τους!
Towards the end of the school year, there will be an event to mark the completion of the program, with the participation of all the groups from the three schools.
The democratic participation of students in issues that concern them is an important step towards creating active citizens in the future. The school building is indeed their second home. It is important that when work is carried out on it, the users of the building, the school community, understand what is being done, by whom and why, as well as what multiplier effect it has.
The Municipality of Halandri, which has shown that it cares about preparing for the climate crisis and sustainability issues, wishes to actively link its schools and education in general to this effort by generalizing the program’s methodology, as young active citizens are the hope for the future, as was said in the discussion.
In closing, we all looked each other in the eyes for a moment and made a promise!
When students have a strong voice, there is definitely hope for the future! This is confirmed by the words we heard today!
“We can express our opinion and know that others will listen to it, and that is very important!”
“Through all the proposals we make, we want to help all schools, not just ours, to become energy self-sufficient!”
“Change comes from small things, from resistance to everyday life!”
You can watch the video of the conference at the following link:
(meeting duration approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes)
*The above content is the sole responsibility of the beneficiary Community Energy River, and neither the European Commission nor the National Coordination Unit Erasmus+ IKY are responsible for the use of the information contained therein.
