On February 28, 2020 a Demo Day was held as a final event of the EU Association Lab program, where the EcoMON Project on Sustainable Consumption for schoolchildren was presented.

The aim of the project is to motivate the younger generation to change their old habits on sustainable ones, following the principles of a sustainable lifestyle.

From August 2019, the project team worked on the creation of a website for teaching staff, through which the teacher can have an additional opportunity to "embed" the theme of sustainable development in each of the subjects provided by the school program. This is required by the reform of the education system in accordance with the Law of Ukraine "On Education" and the implementation of a comprehensive educational line "Environmental Security and Sustainable Development".

The development team included the representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection of Ukraine, the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine (NAPS), the Institute of Modernization of the Content of Education of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management, the NGO "Living Planet" and Metinvest Green Center.

On the website the teachers can find the guidelines and interesting teaching materials for students: presentations, videos, dilemmas, exercises, calculators, tasks and more. All of them can be used to teach different subjects to the students of 5-7 grades.

The content is ready. The website is in test mode. In the future, it will be transferred to the Ministry of Education's website and distributed through partner resources and educational portals.

But there is something else. The heart of the site is a unique service constructor with ready-made examples of exercises and tasks on the topic of sustainable lifestyle in various subjects.

The teacher will be able to prepare for any lesson in a few clicks: mathematics, languages, geography, etc., to make it interesting, and to reveal the topic of sustainable consumption through the exercises and tasks prepared within the project.

In addition, you can not only apply the content of the resource, but also to share own examples of tasks on the website. Their number should increase over time with the teachers - the site users. Popularity quests will be periodically ranked and their leaders will be rewarded by the EcoMON team.

Due to this initiative, more than 2.5 thousand teachers will be able to provide 4 million students with knowledge on how to:

• conserve resources;
• lead a healthy lifestyle;
• separate waste;
• buy what is necessary and to choose the environmentally friendly;
• take good care of nature.

There are no analogues of such service in the world!

The EcoMON prototype was created with the support of the EU Association Lab, GIZ and the Federal Government of Germany. The project team gained the useful knowledge and skills in the incubation program and this had a significant impact on the outcome. It is important to note that in the first stages, prior to the work of the EU Association Lab, the content of methodological and didactic materials was created with the support of TM DeLaMark, TM Oleina, TM Snezhka and TM Sirena.

In December 2019, the first pilot project was launched to test its content in Mariupol. 80 teachers tested the website prototype and content and left feedback. This made it possible to improve the content and functionality of the site.

In addition, with the support of Metinvest Green Center in Mariupol, a competition was held between the teachers to use the materials prepared under the project in the educational process, as well as between the students to assess their own lifestyle in terms of its impact on health and the environment.

The results of the competition have been summed up and the winners are expected to celebrate in April 2020.

The project team is open to working with like-minded partners to further develop the resource.

More about the project and a temporary access to the website in the booklet.