Travelling towards 2030

Conceiving Tourism Experiences based on SDGs

The project

This project has been submitted to Italian Ministry of University and Uducation MIUR, in order to gain the appointment of ITCG Fermi in Pontedera by Rete Scuole UNESCO Italia.

Such idea comes from the participation in National Conference Cittadini di un pianeta intelligente. Quali saperi per la civiltà terrestre, organized by UNESCO Chair in Florence, October 4th, 2018 (see programme). In the final poster session addressed to schools, activities of past years has been presented with this poster.

It involves the work of the teachers Irene Buonazia, Luisella Mori and Linda Novi, for the CLIL approach, as well as the cooperation of Donatella Bagagli and Patrizia Turini for study in Italian language.

As a multi and cross-disciplinary project it involves Art History, English, Tourism Geography, and it aims at including more disciplines such as Law, Economics, History and Italian Literature, and other foreign languages as Spanish and French.

In this first phase, classes involved are 5 A, 5 B - Tourism curriculum of ITCG Fermi in Pontedera (PI); we are as well starting to involve in the project students of 4 AT and BT, in order to pave the way for the next year. More in generale, addressees of the project are students of tourism curriculum, as well as the entire school community, with special communication events, and finally the local community and local stakeholders of tourism industry, where, hopefully, our students are going to work in in a short medium term.

The project will last till May 2019.

Aims

The project carries on a teaching activity started in school year 2016-17, addressed to final classes of Tourism curriculum in the frame of CLIL activities, and centered on the study of locations included in the list of World Heritage Committee.

During such learning modules, at the beginning teachers talk about main aims of UNESCO, the role of WHC, the meaning of 5C, the 5 main strategic objectives stated by the Budapest Declaration in 2002 and extended by the New Zealand proposal (2007) - Credibility, Conservation, Capacity-building (measures), Communication, Communities.

Later on, students, in groups, worked on the criteria of inclusion in WHC List, and then they deepened the study of a single location. Teachers suggested to choose location from English native language, or from countries where the language spoken is not studied by students.

During the years, teachers focussed more and more on the topics of sustainable tourism, , asking students to verify positive impact and drawbacks of tourism in different countries, both from a social and economical pint of view (e.g. taking into consideration job opportunities and building of infrastructures), and from the point of view of cultural or environmental impact (e.g. pollution, consumption due to human interaction, gentrification).

The present project aims at developing more the knowledge and the tourist exploitation of UNESCO sites in relation to sustainable tourism, taking into consideration risks of over-tourism or non responsible tourism (e.g. maintaining social, cultural and gender inequalities). Such topic will be developed along with the discussion on SDGs of 2030 agenda.

Partnerships

The project has the support of Oxfam Italia Intercultura, which is available to contribute illustrating the activities developed by Oxfam Intercultura to enhance the awareness of SDGs.

Thank to Oxfam Intercutura Education Office (based in Florence), chaired by Areta Sobieraj and managed by Claudia Maffei, students will attend to a workshop-lesson in English.

This cooperation could be extended with the participation of some classes of ITCG Fermi in the project WALK THE GLOBAL WALK (info here) , this year developing the goal 11 - “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. As this Oxfam project has a 3 years duration, we are looking for an involvement of other classes and younger students.

Erasmus+

The project has been developed within the framework of an Erasmus+ KA1 Staff project called Team4CLIL. The teachears involved in the project had the opportunity to take part in learning mobilities in the UK and in Ireland.