Copenhagen: Climate learning for all senses

The changing climate is often described in the news in terms of scientific reports or political negotiations. Face the Climate, however, wants to present climate change in a specific, contemporary way, enabling children and young people to relate to the issues in their own everyday lives. The journalists and photographers behind the project have visited nine families in nine different countries to tell the story of how climate change is affecting their lives. The facetheclimate.org website went online in October 2009.

In collaboration with Cubion, a firm of consultants, Face the Climate has developed learning style-based teaching material about the nine families based on journalistic travel reportage in pictures, sound and video. The material consists partly of assignments relating to the stories of the 9 families, and partly of assignments related to the climate and climate change in general. School students will, by means of these assignments, be able to relate climate change to Denmark, their own families and their own lives. The teaching material is aimed at students doing Danish, science/technology, geography and sociology in school year four to nine.

Face the Climate, which is supported by Denmark’s official development assistance organisation Danida, is sustainable in many respects. It deals with green learning and how we ourselves can help to make a difference for the environment, but particularly because the teaching material is freely accessible to everyone, giving it a socially inclusive function. The teaching material is available in Danish at the moment and it is hoped to be available in English in the course of 2010.

Face the Climate’s journalists and photographers can be booked to come and hold lectures, both about the 9 families in some of the world's climate focus areas and Face the Climate's experimental reporting methods. Face the Climate has gained impact partly through EMU Denmark's teaching portal, the purpose of which is to develop methods and prepare tuition/lessons by providing schools with shared access to the most important resources on the Internet. Teaching material provided by Face the Climate is already in use in many places in Denmark.

Exactly how many people are using Face the Climate it is not easy to tell. Face the Climate's project manager Ditte Størner says: ”We have received quite a lot of positive feedback from schools in the central, western and northern regions of Jutland, where representatives of the regions have spread the message about the website. A class at Søndergårdsskolen sent us their poems about climate change which they have written on the basis of Face the Climate's teaching material. Receiving that kind of feedback is simply marvellous. ”

Poems about the climate

Class 8 A at Søndergårdsskolen has written poems about climate change on the basis of Face the Climate's teaching material. Here is an excerpt of a poem by Laura R. Shultz:

Bolivia is in the danger zone
Samuel and his wife
will soon be dead
no doubt about that
They get no water
just a few drops in a bucket
what are they to do
the problem's getting worse

A meeting in Copenhagen
had no effect
we hope it will some time
perhaps this summer