Climate and Environment
The crisis is not coming. Children are already living in it.
This generation did not cause the climate crisis. But they will spend their entire lives navigating it. They know this. They feel it. Climate anxiety is one of the most widely reported concerns among young people across Europe. And yet most schools still treat the environment as a topic inside a science class, disconnected from economics, culture, politics, and daily life.
NextGen Learning Journeys on climate and environment go further.
What children learn
Systems thinking
Children learn that climate is not just about carbon. It is about food, water, energy, inequality, migration, health, and how all of these connect. They look at the science, but also at the human side.
From anxiety to agency
They learn to move from anxiety to agency. Not by pretending the problem is simple, but by discovering that they can understand it, talk about it, and contribute to solutions. Even small ones. Even now.
Local and global
They explore what is happening locally and globally. Who is affected. Who decides. What is fair. They connect what they see in their own community to what is happening across the world.
How they work on it
Children research real environmental challenges. They design responses. They prototype ideas. They collaborate with peers from other countries who face different versions of the same problems. A student in Portugal dealing with drought and a student in Finland dealing with changing seasons are working on the same crisis from completely different starting points. That is where the deepest learning happens.
Where possible, journeys connect to local communities, organisations, or Company Challenges so that children’s work reaches beyond the classroom. This is not a poster project. It is structured, iterative, and designed to produce thinking that matters.
Why this belongs at the centre
Climate is not an add-on in NextGen Education. It is one of the core themes that every school in the network engages with. This is a deliberate choice. European education policy identifies environmental sustainability as a priority. Children identify it as the issue that most affects their future. NextGen brings those two realities together.
Be part of the first wave
We are forming partner schools and country partners now, ahead of the 2026 Erasmus+ submission. Whether you are a school, funder, or education organisation, there is a role for you.