Schneider Electric from Indonesia - Green Skills Award 2024 Finalist
A large network of junior high schools in Indonesia is introducing Sustainable Living as a core subject in its curriculum – thanks to support from the Schneider Electric Foundation.
The charitable wing of French multinational energy company, Schneider Electric Foundation is helping 75 schools in Bandung City, Indonesia promote green themes to teenagers under its ‘Generator Programme.’
“We are developing Indonesia’s first large-scale program on improving literacy and critical thinking skills in the context of clean energy transition,” says Marwa Hammad, Head of Global Gender Strategy at the foundation.
The project is now one of ten finalists in the European Training Foundation’s Green Skills Awards 2024.
The award is a global initiative, first introduced in 2021. It provides ideas and inspiration from all over the world about innovation happening thanks to individuals and institutions. The initiative has become a source of good practices that can inspire people everywhere to make real change happen in creating circular and carbon-neutral economies and societies.
Working with the local board of education and managing agents, Ancora Foundation, the scheme is aimed at facilitating learning activities in Sustainable Living for Grade 8 students across the school network in West Java.
The programme is aligned with national education targets and focuses on improving literacy and critical thinking skills within a green context.
Over 14 weeks the teenaged students studied a comprehensive programme designed to help them achieve two main goals: establishing the carbon footprint within their communities, and designing and implementing solutions through Community Impact Projects.
“We wanted to empower young people to create meaningful change in their communities by identify their local carbon footprint, and finding solutions to reduce it,” Marwa notes.
“Students developed an understanding of their inner potential as agents of change and the innovative mindset required to facing the ‘Industrial Revolution 4.0’,” she adds.
The project involved nearly 20,000 students – half of them girls, and over 1,000 teachers were trained to deliver the curriculum.
The results were impressive: students were encouraged to produced class newspapers identifying local environmental issues, and more than 3,000 articles were published. Nearly 90% of the students – just under 17,000 participated in producing the newspapers.
Stories produced by students included titles such as “Overflowing Plastic Waste”; “Wastes Electricity, Destroyed Future”; and “A World Without Plastic, Can It Happen?”
Ingenious solutions were found to address community pollution problems.
Students were encouraged to bring empathy to the people who were contributing to carbon emissions before designing their own ways to reducing that and transitioning to clean energy.
One novel solution was to use locally-sourced cassava plants – a woody shrub with starchy roots, traditionally used to make tapioca – as the key raw material for producing bioethanol, a renewable fuel. The student team fermented and separated the ethanol produced to be used in environmentally-friendly incandescent lamps.
Another school designed and fitted solar panels to heat and light a classroom, and used batteries were cleverly recycled to light small night lights that could last for up to five weeks.
The promising results were showcased before the board of education, Schneider Electric Indonesia representatives, and other officials at a final event.
“We’ve seen how teachers have improved their teaching skills, and students have become true agents of change. This will have a long-lasting effect on our community to tackle environmental challenges,” Marwa says.