According to the Council Recommendation of 16 June 2022 on learning for the green transition and sustainable development, education and training should be oriented towards the development of sustainability-related competences, in order to prepare people to live and act sustainably within society.
The ultimate goal of sustainability education is to foster more environmentally friendly everyday habits, such as reducing waste, saving energy or choosing more sustainable forms of mobility. Behaviours learned at a young age can in fact translate into conscious and long-lasting lifestyles.
Integrating sustainability into school curricula is therefore no longer an innovative choice, but an educational and social necessity. Climate change, the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation are already ongoing phenomena. For this reason, the UpSpace project aims to engage the entire school community – teachers and students – in sharing tools to understand these challenges and address them with competence and responsibility.
Over the past months, the organisations and schools involved in the UpSpace Consortium have worked on the development of two training courses: one aimed at teachers and one addressed to lower and upper secondary school students.
From 30 September to 2 October 2025, a three-day international training event took place in Thessaloniki (Greece). On this occasion, the project partners – including staff members and teachers from the participating schools – tested the developed training materials and presented for the first time the UpSpace e-learning platform, which will host both training curricula.
Following the meeting in Thessaloniki, the training courses will be translated into all partnership languages (Italian, Greek, Serbian and German). The courses will then be presented to schools, which will be invited to take part in the piloting phase, during which both teachers and students will participate in the two learning experiences.
In particular, the course aimed at students aged between 12 and 16 will be delivered in a blended format, allowing participating classes to experience some of the activities in person together with their teachers.
