Promote a new pedagogy to raise awareness about climate change in classrooms

The implementation of the Paris Agreement and the behavioural changes that this dictates rely on buy-in being achieved at grass-roots level, especially among the young. Within this context, education and awareness are critical levers. However, levels of awareness among teachers in this domain remain globally inadequate and appropriate educational resources are lacking. In addition, the inter-disciplinary approach these educational actions require often runs counter to teaching practices on the ground.
 
The Office for Climate Education (OCE) was founded in 2018 under the auspices of the La main à la pâte Foundation to respond to these challenges. Supported by the FFEM and other partners, it aims to offer education managers and teachers multi-disciplinary resources, training and assistance from local actors.

The project is structured around four components:

1. Producing and publishing educational resources that are inter-disciplinary, multilingual and royalty-free, intended for teachers to develop active learning thus promoting positive climate change action.
2. Ensuring teachers’ professional development by organising 2,500 face-to-face presentations and 3,500 distance learning activities.
3. Creating a community of practitioners bringing together teachers, trainers, institutions, researchers, engineers, children and parents to promote peer learning, experience-sharing and the empowerment of its members through North-South and South-South dialogue.
4. Coordinating, monitoring, evaluating and defining a strategy to extend the project to other countries.

• Involvement of 494,100 pupils and improving their climate knowledge.
• Training of almost 6,000 teachers from primary and secondary schools and enhancing their own knowledge of climate change.
• Production of a number of educational resources in a range of formats.
• Involvement of the local community in school life.
• Scientific, educational and methodological support to educational establishments.
• Raising awareness of climate issues and behavioural change for pupils, teachers and local communities.

This pioneering project closely aligns income generation with sustainable management of natural resources by local herding communities, working as cooperatives. Admired and sold worldwide, cashmere can serve to champion on a huge scale a mode of production that actively contributes to preserving Mongolia's natural resources. That is why the project aims to create an internationally recognised ‘Sustainable Cashmere’ certification, which will be used to replicate and scale-up the model. The project also seeks to develop a method for assessing the industry’s environmental and social impact.