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The Climathon, a sustainable project without borders!

Crédits : Logo by A.Dembélé (student)

The Climathon is also and above all an educational, scientific and borderless project. We went to meet by Zoom, Guillaume Chevalier, a physics and chemistry teacher at the French-German High School of Freiburg im Breisgau, who, with his colleagues and his 29 eighth-grade students, was able to promote their participation in the Climathon, despite a complicated health context. This project is part of a school that is already rich in initiatives on sustainable development and fair trade, in the context of a city that is considered a pioneer in the field of sustainable and ecological urbanization, and has been for 30 years now.

The Climathon began with a presentation in their “School Projects for the Planet Forum From Kindergarten to University”. Every week, small 10-minute video conferences are organized by the school to share projects, ideas, experiences, or to meet inspiring actors. It is in this context that Mathilde Tricoire from the OCE came to present the missions of the OCE and the principle of the Climathon to the students and the city officials present for the occasion.  

City officials Anne-Kathrin Brand and Robert Gundlach gave a videoconference presentation of the problems of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau (themes: canteens and waste management in and around schools) as well as some resources and avenues for analysis. In Freiburg im Breisgau, the city is responsible for school management. Following these presentations, the students were able to work in groups and the floor was quickly freed up to find solutions together.

“Spontaneously, some students went to the canteen, to the secretariat, they also went to see a sustainable development club of the high school which had already carried out a questionnaire and surveys in 2018 about the management of the canteen. Unfortunately, our students have still not returned…compared to the secondary school in Schirmeck, for example, which has already done a good job, we have been slowed down a little by circumstances, so for the moment we are still at an experimental stage, even if the support of the town hall is there and the students are working hard!”. G.C.

Guillaume explains that his course on combustion was a good pretext to launch a game project inspired by the “Carbometer” created by Julien Briton, a teacher in Strasbourg, http://www.carbometre.fr. The objective is to reappropriate the cards of the game by illustrating them but also, by focusing on the waste of the daily life of the pupils, who will have to inquire on the ADEME website about their CO2 emission rate. 

“It’s interesting because the students realized while working on it to what extent they were not aware of the impact of this waste on a daily basis” G.C.

This game (in French) will be available on demand directly by contacting Guillaume Chevalier: chevallier@dfglfa.net

A Climathon that will therefore materialize in any case, despite the difficult conditions imposed by the pandemic, and that will undoubtedly be reborn next year with even more new ideas. In any case, the MPLS Alsace team remains attentive to future needs and available for all types of support in this sense. At the service of the teachers, in all circumstances.

Find some initiatives carried out by the school: 

Newsletter Educiterra (For a common world)

Forum – 10′ to 10:00 : We followed the last edition of the 18/03: Three high school students presented a challenge that they realized: the 100 miles Diet Challenge which consists in eating only foods that come from a radius of 100 miles maximum to limit the carbon impact. ➡️ Read their feedback article after this challenge :

https://www.dfglfa.net/dfg/fr/224-aktuelles/berichte/1337-100miledietchallenge

Following the “DupleX evening”, here is “DupleXo”: speed Dating of science projects for elementary school students. See the principle and the report of the 2019 edition (pages 14 to 8).


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Elena Iuliani (March 18, 2021). The Climathon, a sustainable project without borders! SPOON Open Notebook 🥄 SPOON . Retrieved February 14, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ujcs


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