The project R.I.Z.E.

  • Starting Point

    • Why do people and communities expose themselves to danger?
    • How does the community manage those responsible for mitigating dangers and keeping people safe?

    Hundreds of millions of people around the world choose to live in areas prone to severe floods, forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes. A central cause of this problem is our misunderstanding of probability. As certain as these events are to occur over the long term, for any given place and any given time earthquakes, tornadoes or floods are low probability events.

    Once societies will have to live with changing environmental conditions and therefore need to build resilience by reducing vulnerabilities to natural hazards and, consequently, to have a clearer perspective about “risk”, students must be aware not only of the risks they face nowadays, but the expected risk increase to come, mainly caused by Man's activities.

    Even risks that they don’t recognize as a threat to them today, such as eat waves and cold waves, will be a threat as they get older, so it is imperative to awaken their minds to risk and vulnerability matters.

     

    The Team
    In order to deal with these topics, a group of six schools joined and weaved a partnership named “Risk Impact Zones Environments” (“RIZE”)

     

    Main Priority

    Environmental and climate goals

     

    Specific Objectives

    • share good practices, within an international collaborative process, on “disaster risk reduction”–DRR (on a local, regional, national and international level);
    • instill the need to promote public information actions that motivate students to join projects that increase their preparation for an emergency situation
    • emphasize the role of international cooperation in preserving the natural heritage and promoting sustainable development.».

     

    The Process

    This project consists in a deeper knowledge about the concept of hazard and risk, related to natural causes, this way, all the “Learning Teaching and Training” activities (in a total of six, one at each partner country), have a focus in one type of risk, according to those mentioned above.

    By this, it will be easier for students and teachers to acquire, in situ, accurate information concerning each of the partners’ reality, and each partner “risk“ approaches.


    Although the project involves the mobility of students (from 10 up to 18 years old) and staff members of partner schools, the involvement of other entities will also be required for the activities carried out during the LTT (such as, parents and volunteers from the local community and local authorities and universities).

     

    Evaluation
    By considering significant and very relevant to evaluate the project’s objectives in order to see the real impact of the project in our students, our schools and the whole communities, all the participants will assess in what extent the project not only innovates practices in our digital era but also promotes engaging, connecting and empowering young people. Moreover, teachers will assess if the project transforms the classroom life, involves the sectors of the educational community, improves the digital and linguistic competences, promotes the European dimension, brings the educational community closer to other cultures, stimulates the use and experimentation with new resources and digital tools and encourages cooperative learning; for this, some rubrics and checklists will be implemented along the project activities.

     

    Results
    "RIZE" will be a methodology followed by each partner institution, so, the expected impact on each participant is focused on improving resources concerning a “Risk” approach as a pedagogical way of learning and working at school. At the same time, the project will foster improvements in awareness raising of the concept of “risk” and it will allow to build better methodologies through cross-fertilizing European experience.

    Thus, results will provoke a change and enrich the environmental view and policies of  the different schools involved and even the surrounding community.

     

    Dissemination
    The dissemination plan, without leaving behind the most relevant horizontal / sectoral priorities according to “RIZE” objectives, will strive to expand all project goals and results that will take place at several levels, within schools, at local, regional, national and European levels; in addition, dissemination activities are designed with respect to the target groups to cover:

    • the creation of formal moments of dissemination of the different activities implemented;
    • sharing of documents on different media; Information and testimonies published on each partner school websites;
    • promoting the participation of representatives of students / trainees and staff, involved in this project, in the municipal education councils;
    • dissemination in congresses, training meetings (on-site and online);
    • the work on the eTwinning Platform will contribute to disseminate the activities at a European level and give an idea of which competences and added value this experience will have carried out.

     

    However, eTwinning will not be used only as a dissemination platform, we intend to develop a set of activities along the two years partnership on project TwinSpace.