As we go into the summer months, the three Erasmus+ projects Surefoot participate in have continued to progress smoothly.
 
In Breakthrough for Resilience, the four partners completed an 'individual resilience' workshop led by the Greek partner, the Society of Social Psychiatry. Partners explored 6 resilience methodologies that included 'let's draw', 'name your feelings', and 'the sunbeam of resilience' resilience' and plan to share these widely. Shortly after, and with an initial target of 8 participants, our Italian partner VolTo held two sessions of the individual resilience workshop in Italy for a total of 46 people. VolTo and Sweden-based Mobilizing Expertise are jointly preparing the next phase of activities, the ‘place and nature conservancy resilience’ workshops which will begin taking place in the partner countries in the autumn. ​

 
The team of ‘Once Upon Your Time: storytelling for preventing early school leaving’ have completed the research of methodologies that use storytelling for personal development and to increase mental health in children and teenagers. The Surefoot Effect has covered methodologies that include the use of books in a library, writing in nature, superheroes and a card game with "dark themes" that have led children to write stories ranging from personal experience to topics such as dark holes and the slave trade that would have usually not grabbed their attention. The next phase of the project will see the creation of an advocate document for teachers in the participating countries to use these methodologies in the classroom with children and teenagers. 

​


​The three projects are co funded by the Erasmus+ programme.

The charity Climate Ed runs workshops with school children to further student engagement by building on the basic climate science message through role play, creative tasks, games and news features. In small groups, the children also have opportunities to express themselves with reflective writing.
Since Easter, Climate Ed volunteer Suzanne O’Donnell has been engaged in delivering five one-hour sessions to about 60 of Year 6 children at the Furzedown Primary School in Wandsworth, London. Suzanne, who is a former teacher and has a lot of energy for networking, enjoys being involved in the creative side of climate action together with the children. She’s convinced that the work will go towards raising a generation of carbon literate children, and through it they will support the foundations for a more sustainable future.
Ben Cuddon, founder of Climate Ed, a Carbon Conversations facilitator, and one of the directors of The Surefoot Effect, aims to teach children about climate change and empowers them to take action through the charity’s activities. To do so, Suzanne and other volunteers draw on their own background. For Suzanne it meant that she was able to use relevant examples of recent activism, for example student protest of fossil fuel companies funding at the Science Museum. It was also possible to include a slide showing an environmental art project attended by young children funded by their local council. She’s also keen to use her teaching skills to facilitate questions and let the children to voice concerns which they did with great enthusiasm.
To balance the science videos, the activities provided a way to make carbon counting fun by making up a catchy short rhyme or a comic sketch. Unsurprisingly this created quite a lot of laughter among the 9-10 year-olds. This added a playful aspect while focus was the major carbon reductions they and their families can achieve. Questionnaires and presentations pointed to carbon tracker apps for their families to carry the work into weekly accounting beyond the classroom and challenged them on how much emissions participants are able to save.
Suzanne thinks the students after the workshop have a good handle on the main causes and impacts. They are aware that flying or owning an SUV both being carbon intensive is a problematic issue; furthermore, some of the kids saw a conflict that those activities are presented as aspirational. However, they are aware that choices are available and can be made about the future that tackle the travel problem. They also pointed out benefits of vegan diets to their friends and parents and making reductions there too. 
Suzanne taught art and design at secondary level some years ago. Working at primary level is a huge difference she says, because this age group wants to know what’s happening in the world, what's changing and why. It was a great reward for her to get back to her local community. Even with Covid restrictions they’ve proved this approach to be successful from a clarification and practical action point of view.
So far Climate Ed has run their programme in schools around south London, with bookings for the coming academic year there’s a huge desire to spread awareness among the school community and build relations with other groups.
If you would like to set up Climate Ed affiliate groups in the UK or in other countries the charity would love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch via [email protected]

A few updates on the three Erasmus+ projects. 

Breakthrough for Resilience
The project Breakthrough for Resilience has passed its half-way milestone recently. Partners have collected resilience tools in three aspects: people, places and communities, held a pilot workshop in November 2020, and the Society of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health based in Greece has run three further pilot workshops. Our partners will deliver 3 workshops during 2021, each dedicated to one of the three main aspects of the project. Please join us for our Creativity Builds Resilience workshop in June.

Sustainability, Heritage, Health
In the project Sustainability, Heritage, Health we have together with partners from Greece, Spain and Lithuania started planning the first routes which will explore heritage in the four participating countries and make connections to environmental issues. On one of the routes, in Athens, you can stroll along marble streets that are thousands of years old to learn about Poseidon, god of the seas, and the current state of the world’s oceans, pollution, how millions of people depend on the oceans for livelihoods, and the ways we have to protect them. On one of the routes in Scotland, you can learn about the visionary thinkers and how the country has become a leader in the transition to a more sustainable future.

​Once Upon Your Time
In the project Once Upon Your Time for schools, we and partners in Iceland, Spain and Slovenia are researching storytelling methodologies. The goal is to adapt these methodologies and work with children aged 11-16 in schools in the four participating countries.
More info to follow as the projects progress. ​

By Euri Bartlome Vidal, Associate at The Surefoot Effect
​As a host of the COP26 and a leading nation in the transition to a low carbon society and a net zero nation by 2045, the Scottish government asks the following questions:

• What are the opportunities for green investment in Scotland?
• How does Scotland propose to strengthen its green economy and the energy sector?
• How does the country plan to achieve net carbon zero and what exemplar projects are already underway?
• What role does the private sector have to play in achieving that goal and what support is available?

This is tougher than a net-zero carbon target, which commits only to balancing carbon dioxide emissions (for example, by purchasing carbon credits by funding things such as reforestation in third-party countries such as developing nations in Africa or Asia, which do not require carbon reductions at home). The Scottish Government will also respond to the global climate emergency by adopting an ambitious new target to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030 – the toughest statutory target of any country in the world for this date going above and beyond what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said is required worldwide to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Scotland has already almost halved emissions since 1990, and according to the Scottish government, “The second half of Scotland’s journey to net-zero emissions will, undoubtedly, require different, and in many cases much more difficult.”
To make recommendations to Ministers on how Scotland’s net-zero transition should be achieved, a Citizens’ Assembly on climate change was convened. Grounded in Scotland's Climate Change Act (2019), Scotland's Climate Assembly brought over 100 people together from all walks of life to learn about, deliberate and make recommendations to answer: "How should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way?"
Each Assembly member identified the top 10 statements which were most important to them. These were consolidated and ordered based on the statements which were prioritised most by members. The two most important recommendations regarding fairness to tackle the climate emergency, prioritised by over 70% of Assembly members were:
1) Take into account the needs of different communities across Scotland, recognising that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution.
2) Target the highest emitters so that organisations and individuals with the highest carbon footprint have to make the biggest changes.
You can access the full document here: www.climateassembly.scot/interim-report

With the project 'Once Upon YOUR Time' we will provide opportunities for teachers to support their students’ mental health. Through storytelling-based methods the project focuses especially on students with fewer opportunities or at risk of social exclusion. We aim to use personal storytelling to understand the processes that make our life meaningful, whatever the circumstance lived.
Follow the project on Facebook @OnceUponYourTimeErasmusPlus

The 'Once Upon YOUR Time' is an international project funded by Erasmus+ involving four organisations: Youth Reach Centers of Reykjavik (Iceland), Institute for Research and Training in Education (Slovenia), YOMN network (Spain) and The Surefoot Effect (Scotland).

​The Erasmus+ project "Sustainability, Heritage, Health" officially started on March 16 with the kick-off meeting. Due to the pandemic and the current travel limitations the meeting took place online, instead of us all meeting up in Scotland. Partners Ziniu Kodas from Lithuania, Innovation Frontiers from Greece and the Centre for Ecological Studies AbrazoHouse from Spain joined The Surefoot Effect to initiate project activities.
 
The meeting took place over 3 2hr sessions where we discussed the general plans for this 3-year project, including management, monitoring, quality control, evaluation and dissemination activities as well as the four main activities of the project: 1) the creation of a walking programme with three different routes in each partner country that will include mindfulness activities and an exploration of local sustainability initiatives; 2) a recipe book with 40 recipes from partner countries showcasing the use of traditional and more sustainable ways of growing food; 3) an online project platform and a mobile application that will hold the walking routes and the recipes; and, lastly, 4) a project handbook that will summarise the experiences of the partners and suggest a path forward for organisations and individuals to engage with and initiate similar projects and activities.
 
We used Zoom breakout rooms to get to know each other one to one, simulating the coffee break times as if we were in person. As next steps, partners discussed ideas for a project logo and will be meeting again soon to speak about the content for the walking routes in each partner country.

The website for the Erasmus+ project "Breakthrough for Resilience: People, Places and Communities" has a new look. You can access it here: 
www.resilienceproject.eu 
Mobilizing Expertise, the project's Swedish partner, has been working on the website's glossy end, which we all like. Everyone can now access the resilience tools that partners have been preparing for several months. The tools are divided into the three main categories of the project: people, places and communities.

The site includes blog posts, information about the project, a description of the project partners, what is resilience, project news and any past newsletters, including an option to sign up to receive any future editions:
 http://resilienceproject.eu/elementor-483/

Together with partners in the Erasmus+ project 'Once Upon Your time', we are looking into creating tools to support and strengthen the mental health of children and young people. We will focus mainly on storytelling methodologies and case studies from the four participating countries: Iceland, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. 
We will soon start writing a series of essays on the themes: 1) storytelling as a pedagogical tool, 2) storytelling and mental health, 3) storytelling and personal development in children and young people, and 4) storytelling in the formal education setting.
​We look forward to sharing the stories with you! More to follow during the year.

It was a day of joy and creativity when Pam and Euri from Surefoot ran a pilot workshop to test and showcase tools we have found in research across the 3 aspects: people, communities and places. It was thrilling to witness how people had fun when opening up their creativity, and how this was a portal to build resilience. The main tools covered in the workshop were: 
1. Resilience Compass, 2. Wheel of Life, 3. Mandala making, 4. Tree Visualisation, 5. Let’s Draw and 6. Restoration and re-evaluation - Cascina Bert, nature conservation.
The participants fed back that the tools are useful for introspective journeying and to understand what is good and healthy for people and society. They also thought the tools will be useful in the economic and social context for mapping, making changes and importantly making sense of our “new normal."
Read about the tools and the project's organisations in the report: Breakthrough for Resilience - pilot workshop.

​An ideas catalogue with environmental initiatives and new ways of viewing climate challenges are some of the outcomes DuPont in Denmark experienced when running Carbon Conversations (CC) groups with colleagues. 

We are thrilled that our 3-year project 'Sustainability, Heritage, Health' (SHH) has just received Erasmus + funding! ​

Euri Vidal from Surefoot was a student at the University of Cape Town in 2006 and wrote the article ‘The Cape Town Water Crisis, White Man-Made Climate Change, and the Road to Sharpeville’.
The article focuses on climate justice by arguing that white people in the Global North are primarily responsible for climate change and people of colour in the Global South will be the most affected. In this case, it is the poor South Africans of Cape Town, predominantly black people, who are currently suffering the consequences of the Cape Town water crisis more disproportionally.

To contribute to the fight against climate change, the Spanish National Committee proposed the International Office to carry out a small environmental sustainability project that started in April 2018 to help six other National Committees (NC) to reduce their environmental impact. The committees of Macedonia, Uruguay, Mexico, Portugal, Costa Rica and Thailand agreed to implement a series of actions to make their pre-selection and selection processes more environmentally friendly. This project was inspired in the work of the Spanish National Committee and the reduction of the environmental impact that its activities and alumni had during the selection year 2017-18. The Spanish NC also implemented activities during its annual summer programme 'ActionxChange' and during its winter short course 'ActionxPeace'.

Surefoot Director, Pam Candea’s experience as facilitator at Belville Community Garden Trust gives insight into the guided Future Conversations sessions and what this workshop can bring to people and organisations.

The group at Belville ranged in age from people in their early 20’s through to people in their 60’s. It was mainly women but the group, 6-10 people each session, usually had 2-3 men as well. The group met 8 times over 3 months.

A Wednesday afternoon in March was the first session, where Pam met with Geri Sinclair, Volunteer Coordinator at Belville, and volunteer Trisha Orr who took part in the facilitating, before the other participations arrived. The take off for the session was the dining area of Belville’s large catering kitchen where the project’s chef creates tasty and nutritious meals using food from Fareshare.

Next Steps with Future Conversations
The group have expressed a desire to keep going and are looking at continuing to meet Wednesday afternoons to keep their soup veg plot going and to explore new concepts and to take on new actions.

Geri and Trisha hope to run some permaculture sessions and to bring other practices to the group as well. One thing added to each session was poem reading from Looby McNamara, a permaculture teacher who writes about cultural emergence.

Here is an excerpt from her poem Gratitude as an Attitude,
We arrive in the presence of now,
The gift of the present.
When we choose to view with an appreciative gaze
Our mind chatter stills
We are here and now and we are timeless.
We are uniquely ourselves
And undeniably connected