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The Project:
The project, Looking for likely alternatives (LOLA), launched in 2005 by the CCN network(1) is a pedagogical tool for teachers and students which assists them in the process of identifying, evaluating and documenting cases of social innovation towards sustainable lifestyles. The LOLA pilot project aimed to adapt to the needs of higher education the process of case collection initiated in the EMUDE(2) European research project and complete the “catalogue of cases of sustainable daily life solutions” on the SEP web platform. It was organised in two parts by first involving four teachers training schools in the process of collecting cases of social innovation, documenting the didactic process and maintaining an open discussion on the experience amongst the CCN members. The second part of the program consists in organising the presentation and dissemination of the sustainable daily life solutions (catalogue of cases) and further replication of the process (teaching pack).
Benefits:
The LOLA project allows teachers and their class to discover, approach and give visibility to new sustainable lifestyles in their surroundings. It provides an opportunity to progress beyond the common pedagogical use of case studies and project work which tend to be limited to the immediate classroom context. The process brings the students into direct face-to-face contact with groups of people (the “creative communities”) already implementing sustainable solutions in their daily life and thereby increases the learning potential of working with cases. It connects the work of teachers at several schools in a collective search for examples of universal value, thereby putting into action the goals of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). This consists in a process of integrating initiatives dealing with “learning to learn” and “learning for a sustainable future” with initiatives concerned with learning to be a critical, aware, consumer citizen. The documentation and evaluation of this process ise useful for other teacher trainers and schools — increasing their knowledge of what is actually happening in society in terms of initiatives for responsible lifestyles and sustainable development.
Outputs:
The LOLA pilot project has been developing a “teacher training toolkit” and a “students reporter book” to support the collection of cases of sustainable lifestyles by the students and the organizing of the activity by the teachers. A European catalogue of cases of sustainable lifestyles is progressively completed on the Sustainable Everyday Project web platform. 4 specific web-spaces are currently used by the 4 schools participating to the pilot phase and will present their findings. One more web-space is dedicated to the organisation of the process and will present all the lessons learned during the LOLA pilot project. (1) The Consumer Citizenship Network (CCN) is an interdisciplinary network of educators, researchers and civil-society organisations, (including UNESCO, UNEP and Consumers International) who recognize the pressing need for constructive action by individuals in order to achieve sustainable consumption and global solidarity. The Consumer Citizenship Network has, since 2003, developed interdisciplinary approaches to central issues dealing with the balance between material and non-material well-being and with how one can translate ethical values into everyday practice through conscientious participation in the market. CCN also brings together expertise in the fields of citizenship-, environmental- and consumer education to further develop research and good practice for teaching and accessing consumer citizenship education. The Network consists of 125 institutions in 37 countries.The project targets lecturers, researchers and teacher trainers in higher education; students, professionals working with children and young people, public authorities, and associations dealing with citizenship training, sustainable development and consumer issues.. By focusing on social responsibility, the CCN addresses the growing international concern for implementation of norms and behaviour which support sustainable development and cooperation. (2) EMUDE (Emerging Users Demands for Sustainable Solutions) is a Specific Support Actions (SSA) funded within the Priority 3 – NMP research area: Increasing the “user awareness” of the 6th framework.
