How to reduce the carbon footprint.
The Energy Scouts was a idea to acquire students who were willing to participate in the MOST project. We describe the project idea as a whole because every single project had a important part of the success of this overarching project idea, we want to present here.
The idea of the SCPs around the overarching topic “energy” arised in a brainstorming session between the MOST partners Innsbruck. Ulrike Umshaus from “Energieagentur Tirol” started working out a concept and a framework which made it possible to integrate vocational schools into the MOST project. To give the students a perfect frame to carry out their project ideas, we decided to cooperate with the Chamber of Labour Tirol, to get contacts to companys and have the possibility to set up a certificate. Together we organised a Launch Workshop for students to inform about the possibilities of the MOST project and communicate the idea of MOST.
The Launch workshop introduced into the energy topic. Beside the students, we invited also experts from different fields, to bring them together with the students. The Launch workshop resulted in teambuilding and co-creation sessions which led to inspiring talks about sustainability and the need of alternative energy, possibilities of energy saving and so on. The participating students were thinking of ideas of projects, they can carry out together and together with their apprentice company. In weekly sessions over 3 months, the students met each other, talked about their findings and lessons learned.
As the overarching topic is energy, the themes and issues, the students tackled were all characterised by a strong connection to the energy topic. The close collaboration with the participating stakeholders made it possible to really open up school, to carry out School-Community-Projects. As an example we want to present a project, which was carried out in cooperation with a local car dealer. The students where thinking of how to reduce the carbon footprint. And came up with the idea to lend bikes and e-scooter instead of cars while the cars are in the repair shop for a few hours. He found out that, the customers mostly just drive into the city to go shopping, while waiting until their own car is fixed. And so the offer of bikes and e-scooter was successful in many cases and saved carbon dioxid. Other projects calculated on how they can improve the efficiency of the machines in their company.
The dessimination was made on several levels. At the end of the project we carried out a MOST-Energy Fair, where the students presented their findings to a broad audience of stakeholder from different areas with short presentations. This fair ended also in a broad discussion between the students and the companys who were present. In addition, a short video about the idea of the project was produced and can be found here.
The projects also attracted attention of local newspapers, who were willing to report about the successful projects. An example can be found here.
In addition, the project was submitted for the sustainability award of the Forum Umweltbildung (part of the Austrian Ministery of Climate Change)and won a price in the category of “cooperation”. A Report can be found here.
Beside this, a lot of companys were informed about the successful projects which led to positive synergy effects, which became visible in the requests and interest shown in the second round of SCPs.
