Sifnos’ High School “Nikolaos Promponas”
Sifnos’ High School is a general education secondary school situated in the central area of Sifnos, an island of the Cyclades. It is hosted by a heritage building that was built in the 1935s. The students’ ages range from 13 to 18 and the students involved in this project will be 14-17. We are a small school, with about 180 students and 22 teachers. Our students speak English very well and some of them also speak French or German. More than 15% of them are migrants of the second generation, mostly from Balkan countries. The students’ families are middle class, which is affected by the economic crisis. There are three classes of Gymnasium and three of Lyceum, all with a curriculum of general education.
We would like to join the project to instill a profound sense of environmental awareness in our students by broadening their horizons. We strongly believe we can successfully do so by sharing ideas and experiences through a partnership with some of our like-minded European partners. We wish to spark a genuine interest in our students in caring for the environment, respecting it, and searching for suitable environmentally-friendly solutions for future generations.
We live on a small island where efforts are made towards efficient use of resources and alternative energy sources (there are two wind power generators). We struggle with water shortages but that is why a vernacular architecture, based on the accumulated experience and practice of many centuries has been developed, related to water conservation. Our goals, according to the idea of “Think globally, act locally”, are 1. Inform school (and local) community about global and local environmental issues and how climate change will impact our region, our country, and our world. 2. Promote values and behaviors that address environmental degradation and climate change in an inclusive and participatory setting. 3. Empower our school and local community with the civic engagement skills necessary to take action to help fight climate change.
We have been carrying out the Erasmus+ project for the past two years and we contributed to its dissemination to a very large extent by designing and administering the project website. This experience might also be used in this project. The involved key people have management experience and have already taken part in several environmental projects and acted as hosts for teachers and students during previous Erasmus+ project meetings. They are Argiris Gkoumas – coordinator and Religious Studies teacher; Nikolaos Belios – biologist, assistant manager and financially responsible; Sevi Pefani –Greek Litterature, evaluation responsible; Eleftheria Fasoli, French teacher, implementation responsible; Asimina Theodorou – Home Economics teacher, dissemination.
Website : https://blogs.sch.gr/gymsifno