In Madrid, three secondary schools turned climate awareness into part of everyday education. Through the DEAR project Food Wave, teachers worked with students to co-create a new biology curriculum where food, waste, and climate are studied together.

In 2022, 35 students from diverse backgrounds took part in a ten-workshop programme blending learning, reflection and real-world experience. They mapped food systems, examined how marketing shapes consumption, and visited a local ecological farm to see sustainable production first-hand.

Their proposals – from waste-reduction measures to greener school menus – fed directly into classroom plans now adopted by the schools. A special training session drew interest from the City Council’s Environmental Education Department, showing how the approach can grow beyond the pilot.

“It is our present and our future – we have to think as a society about where we are going and what we can do every day.” —Student participant, Madrid

Similar tailored workshops took place in Lisbon (PT), Milan (IT), Bruges (BE), and Almere (NE), involving hundreds of classrooms and influencing thousands of pupils.