CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Final summary slides September 2010 Grant agreement number: EIE/07/001/SI Start date of the action: 01/10/07 End date of the action: 30/09/10

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People CONNECT in a nutshell WHAT? sustainable mobility campaigns for young people GOAL? encouraging school children (5-12), students (13-18) and their parents (18+) to use more sustainable modes when travelling to and from school (inform, teach and encourage using sustainable modes) AIM? 20% increase in the use of sustainable transport by pupils (primary school) for home to school trips and an increase of 10% by students (secondary school)

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Project partners Mobiel 21, Belgium – Coordinator Institut für Verkehrspedagogik, Austria DTV Consultants, The Netherlands JMP Consulting, United Kingdom University Maribor, Slovenia Union of Bulgarian Black Sea Local authorities, Bulgaria City of Miskolc, Hungary Centre for Renewable Energy Sources, Greece City of Modena, Italy

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Talking about success stories simply isn’t enough ! Dissemination, implementation and learning by doing are crucial! This was the main drive in the CONNECT project. The project opened eyes for new mobility by using the power of the youth. Walk the talk!

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People CONNECTing people Three main objectives: Informing children, students and parents of the benefits of travelling to and from school using sustainable modes. Teaching children to travel to school in a safe way, by increasing their knowledge and skills in daily traffic. Encouraging children, pupils and parents to travel to school using sustainable modes. CONNECT has developed a campaign for primary and secondary schools that can be implemented in all European countries. Traffic Snake Game for primary schools ECO-TRIP campaign for secondary schools.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Promoting walking and cycling for children? Important target group for changing travel modes. The travel behaviour of parents has a significant impact on children and their choice of travel modes. Most children and adolescents do not formally learn how to use alternative transport modes, or learn about the advantages of using sustainable transport from their parents or their school. Mobility and traffic education is still too often only related to learning traffic rules or road safety training. Many children are driven by car to schools that are often within walking or cycling distances. Today’s children are tomorrow’s adult transport users and individual mobility behaviour is created at a very early age.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People CONNECT Building blocks

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People CONNECT Train the trainer

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People CONNECT Train the practitioners

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Primary schools: Traffic Snake Game played over the course of one week every time a pupil uses a sustainable mode of transport to travel to school, (s)he receives a travel mode sticker the aim of the game is for a school to reach the head of the snake on the Traffic Snake Game banner The game is the minimum, but every participating school is encouraged to set up the ‘deluxe’ version: the whole school pays extra attention to sustainable transport during the entire week of the game. (car free day, cycle training, lessons, …)

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Secondary schools: Eco-Trip

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Results Traffic Snake Game Has engaged over 70,000 children from 295 schools in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United Kingdom over the three years of the campaign. Over the three years, the average increase between the ‘before’ and ‘during’ monitoring was 14%. Furthermore, the average increase between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ data was 8% over the three years of the game. Monitoring results have been used to calculate car km and carbon reductions over the course of the project. The results for the Traffic Snake Game show a total of car km were saved over the three years which is equivalent to approximately kg CO2.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Results Traffic Snake Game (2)

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Results Eco-Trip Has engaged nearly children from 66 schools in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United Kingdom over the two campaign years. The chart on next slide shows the results from the first year of the campaign as for this year we received complete modal shift results for each partner. In the second year of the ECO- TRIP campaign it was not compulsory to hold an ECO-TRIP week and for the teachers to complete all the hands up surveys. The results show an excellent increase of 12% between the ‘before’ and ‘during’ monitoring data. The ‘after’ monitoring data shows this has been maintained with a 8% increase between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ results.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Results Eco-Trip (2)

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Lessons learned (1) Sustainable mobility In most EU countries, the change from Traffic Safety Education towards Mobility Education is an ongoing struggle both at the level of curricula as well as at the actual schools. Unfortunately mobility has still a rather low priority. The best way forward for sustainable mobility at schools is link it to the topic Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Tailor-made approach An EU school campaign can work best by adding tailor made relations to the country like translations, adaptations to the curriculum and close contact with schools. These have proven extremely important for CONNECT. Furthermore a campaign is best embedded in a national, regional or local context.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Lessons learned (2) Learning by doing The CONNECT campaigns have proven to provide good results. A longterm effect is only reachable when the school draws attention to the topic on a regularly basis, as the generation of schoolchildren (and parents) renews every year. Competition All over Europe the CONNECT campaigns have proven to be appealing to children and young people because of the element of competition. Children are focussed on collecting dots, while the young people are eager to win from others by making the best movie.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Lessons learned (3) Enthusiastic adoption The success of the campaigns in the different countries were heavily dependent on an enthusiastic teacher or principal at a school. You need an enthusiastic forerunner! Level of Implementation Convincing school teachers and students takes power of persuasion, especially to motivate them to make the most of the campaign by implementing its deluxe version (‘we integrate’ and ‘we build upon’), rather than its standard version (‘we participate’).

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Lessons learned (4) Organisation The organisation of the campaign in primary schools is very different from the organisation in secondary schools. In primary schools, children have a fixed teacher for the year. This allows them to implement extra activities within the curriculum with relative ease. In secondary schools, teachers tend to change according to the subject. So there is a need for a campaign coordinator to oversee its implementation within key curriculum areas. Easy does it In all cases the campaign should be relatively hassle free to implement at a school. A tailor-made approach and close contact with the school are helpful in this matter.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Lessons learned (5) Timing For secondary schools it is really important to give the schools the time to implement the campaign in their planning. Planning this year allows doing next year. It is best to plan the ECOTRIP campaign before the academic year activities and curriculum is decided. Political threshold The CONNECT campaigns have proven to have a low political threshold and this is a huge advantage to attract stakeholders. The theme of sustainable mobility is easily picked up these days: the combination of safety, health and children can be a good opportunity for a more structured working basis. Take advantage of it!

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Biggest difficulty Data collection For teachers a campaign is often seen as additional work, even if it is as simple as the Traffic Snake Game or Eco-Trip: it is something in-between, just for fun for many of them. Whether it creates a modal shift in transport modes is the concern of mobility experts, it is not really the concern of teachers. This lead to “monitoring isn't important!!” in the eyes of schools. So don’t underestimate the time you will spend motivating people to send you data. A trick we used was to offer gadgets for students only after the schools provided us with data. Works great for primary schools where children like small gadgets. Is sadly enough less convincing for secondary schools target group.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People In 2009, the project was awarded the prestigious Sustainable Energy Europe Award in the category ‘Promotional, Communication and Educational Actions’ out of 259 candidates. CONNECT was praised for setting up new and easy sustainable mobility campaigns where pupils and students have a central and active role, that lead to actual modal shift. An award winning project

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Your CONNECTion The story does not end when the EU funded project ends. CONNECT is focusing on achieving a snowball effect in order to spread the campaign across Europe as well as spread it over more schools within a country. Contact the consortium partner in your country if you are interested in participating in the project and find out what is ongoing today. Contact the project coordinator if your country was not yet involved in the CONNECT campaigns.

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Visit our website watch a 5 minute video summary of CONNECT download the CONNECT booklet with lessons learned download other project materials and deliverables discover our project and to make use of the experiences and lessons learnt

CONNECT – Developing & Disseminating Excellent Mobility Management Measures for Young People Contact Raf Canters (Project Coordinator) Mobiel 21, Belgium find all contact details of the consortium partners at The CONNECT consortium wishes to thank all those involved in the project for their participation, cooperation and insights. Keep up the good work, in the spirit of CONNECT. The sole responsibility for the content of this presentation lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Communities. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.