Our school is nearby the capital of Finland and at the same time close to the country side. We have many students from abroad, close to 90. We have international projects in lower secondary school, which means a lot of visitors from foreign countries have been to our school (Japan, Thailand, New Zealand etc.) We are the only school in Finland who have done mural for olympic games Tokio 2020 on topic of plastic waste. We do a lot of international co-operating work with frendship schools in the world. Our teachers already are motivated on using different methods in their teaching, such as the concept of learning by playing games. We would also like to offer the pupils an opportunity to learn about new cultures and ways how to co-operate with pupils from other countries. We have had a previous KA2-project where we learned that pupils came out of the project much richer, broad minded, motivated and cooperative, and understanding differences in different countries.

In our school we try to teach environmental education in after school programmes. We consider an opportunity to develop this project at international level. Our students will have the right background to explore environmental and sustainable development issues. As teachers, we want them to be engaged in problem solving, in taking action to protect the environment. Our area is rich in natural vegetation, forests, natural reservations. Participating in this project we expect our students to get involved in problem solving regarding ecological issues and experience the various dimensions of the sustainability in our region and globally. Topics that have already been studied at local level:

• clean water and its impacts on human health
• pollution of the seas by plastic waste
• sustainability of ground and surface waters
• water: a renewable source of energy