One Page Summary

Our solution is a concrete, practical and fun way for children and teachers to engage with key messages about climate change - using an award winning multi-media educational resource - Project Earth Rock (PER). PER has been used in 120 UK schools (to 27,000 students), received a commendation from the Rushlight Awards in January 2017, won in the Communications Category of the International Energy Institute Awards in November 2017, and is the subject of a three-year research project with the University of Sheffield (UK).

PER, produced by Big Green Machine, has the ambition to transform sustainability and climate change education globally. The programme was designed by three arts entrepreneurs and launched in 2014, and gets classrooms singing and laughing whilst learning about topics including; carbon footprints, saving energy and recycling waste.

We understand Croatian teachers do not receive training to teach children about climate change, potentially leaving the current school generation ill-prepared to face the significant challenges ahead. Croatian teachers need a novel, financially self-sustainable and scalable approach that has been trialled successfully elsewhere and which is popular with teachers and their students. PER is just such an approach.

Solution in practical terms
The resource has 12 themes, each with an original song, a song-teaching video, a karaoke video and an animation. These elements come together in cross-curricular lesson plans, providing teachers with a fun lesson which can be implemented as a term of work or piecemeal into the curriculum. We will work with local experts in Croatia to translate the lesson plans, slides and worksheets and subtitle the videos. Students will learn the songs in the original English to support their language development.

We will pilot and train an initial cohort of teachers at the school chosen by DOOR in the use of the materials, ideally using a "train the trainer" model. Many teachers need support to enable them to teach about issues that they didn't learn about when they were at school, and PER enables teachers to confidently address issues and can be delivered "out of the box" by any teacher. The program supports broad educational agendas, by covering sustainability themes, supporting the music curriculum and aligning well other curriculum areas including geography, science, numeracy and literacy.

Implications of our Solution. We have a well-developed view of the activities required to implement the solution (see budget, Gantt chart and implementation plan). We also have an established experienced team who have developed the material and have the expertise to implement and evaluate the program - as outlined in our response on the team. We are committed to using Croatian - based experts (including designers, translators and print/production staff) when possible to embed the project in the short and long-term and provide opportunities for knowledge transfer and cross-pollination.

With respect to competitors and the difference of our approach, feedback from the numerous schools, teachers and pupils who have used PER materials suggests that we are unique, as in the quote below.

"I think the materials that you are producing are ideal. In some ways it is educating the teacher at the same time as you are educating the children." (A headteacher, David Dixon, from Mulgrave Primary School in London.)

We are confident that the song teaching and karaoke videos and animations set PER apart from all other climate change education programmes as they make it fun and appealing to a large cross section of students. The songs are thoroughly taught so all students are able to join in. As any class teacher can use PER, it is significantly cheaper to implement than hiring sustainability educators to achieve the same outcomes.

Scalability. We have built a strong track record with (PER) in the UK: teachers, students and over 120 school communities currently make good use of the resource and as the resource is downloadable over the web it is it easy to scale and disseminate the materials. We are currently planning a major UK rollout, aimed at reaching 3000 UK schools by the end of 2022, and there are potential economies of scale in terms of management, marketing costs and also possibly printing and production which the Croatian project could benefit from in this respect.

Scaling will require some translation and re-printing of materials provided for in our draft budget and implementation approach. We believe that due to the strong visual and musical content PER will adapt well. Following the completion of the pilot phase there will be different options to explore for rollout to the remaining schools in Croatia. The preferred option will be to find a funder who will provide the approximate €150,000 to give each school their own copy. Alternatively, DOOR or Big Green Machine could establish an ecommerce site to sell directly to Croatian schools.