ATTUNE - Activate the University for Climate Change
Specific programme: KA220-HED - Cooperation partnerships in higher education
Research team:
Coordinator:
- ASOCIACION PLAN DE ACCION GLOBAL PARA LA TIERRA GAP ESPANA(Spain);
Partners:
- INEUROPA SRL (Italy);
- Agado Gesellschaft für nachhaltige Entwicklung UG (Germany);
- Fundacja GAP Polska - Plan Globalnego Dzialania na rzecz Ziemi (Poland);
- Mikado Danismanlik Hizmetleri Ltd. Sti. (Turkey);
- UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA (Italy);
- UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBERTSITATEA(Spain);
- OZYEGIN UNIVERSITESI (Turkey);
- AKADEMIA PEDAGOGIKI SPECJALNEJ IM.MARII GRZEGORZEWSKIEJ (Poland);
- STIFTUNG UNIVERSITAT HILDESHEIM (Germany)
Total budget: 400.000€ (UPV/EHU: 36.700,00 €)
Total funded: 400.000€ (UPV/EHU: 36.700,00 €)
Start date: 01/10/2022
End date: 30/11/2024
Total duration: 24 months
Brief description: University life goes beyond formal educational activity. Campuses are not only places where people gather to study and work, but also effect many other areas, such as recreational & sports activities, mobility, consumerism, food, leisure, etc. Universities also impact on the local population and directly influence the sustainability of the area where they are located. The university community is an ideal environment to influence behaviour to produce a more sustainable society. GAP España piloted a university based project in 2019, as part of a broader programme know as ReActivate+, and it son became apparent that the focus on the university community produced very encouraging results. What motivated GAP España was not only the positive results achieved, but the interest shown by other universities from different regions in Spain as well as GAP organizations & universities in other countries.
Any programme that successfully promotes activities in favour of sustainable development and the fight against Climate Change motivates GAP España. The actions proposed by ATTUNE enable change in the university community by transforming its members into true agents of change and involving them in achieving objectives in relation to sustainability. ATTUNE shifts the emphasis from knowledge to action. Areas such as energy, mobility, food, waste, procurement, etc. Form the basis of the actions encourgaed by the programme. Incorporating the fight against Climate Change into university life not only influences the current situation the university finds itself in, but also has a medium, and long term, effect as the students studying there will one day be the ones who engage and construct the society of the future. In addition, as the programme
encourages change from within – the teams set up within the university are formed by the university community -, the changes are permanent and effective, and this motivated GAP España.
GAP España and the partner organizations do not have the resources, both human or technical, to assist the GAP International network or universities outside Spain in running the programme in their respective countries, therefore funding is the only way the programme could be piloted and embedded into different cultures & sceanarios. The core of the ATTUNE programme is the online platform, which delivers the programme, serves as a means of communication between participants and offers statistics & reports which are very useful to both the participating university and evaluating the programme overall. Funding is also required to pilot the programme in 5 countries simultaneously and for the programme to be robust, testing it in 6 different languages (5 participating countries + English) is critical. The inclusion of English, despite not being the official language of any of the partners, allows European universities, that in the future take part in ATTUNE, to use this transversal language when it is launched on their campuses.