Did you know that it takes up to 2,400 litres of water to make a single hamburger? Or that one flight from Finland to Europe can create as much pollution as eating 100 hamburgers? And that a plastic bottle can take 450–1,000 years to decompose if thrown on the ground?
These were some of the questions highlighted in short info videos created by Laurea’s social services students this autumn. The videos were part of a social impact course, where two small student groups worked on a 3-credit project connected to the GATE project. Their task was to find creative ways to encourage schoolchildren to support the idea of sustainable development.
As the course for social service students was online, they preferred to make their project online, too. Originally, the plan was to collaborate with schools. However, new restrictions on mobile phone use in Finnish schools during autumn 2025 made online interaction challenging. Although the law allows phones for learning with teacher permission, many schools adopted stricter rules limiting phone use altogether.
Despite these challenges, both groups aimed to raise pupils’ awareness of sustainability themes — environment, culture, society, and economy — aligned with the UN 2030 Agenda and GreenComp competence areas.
What the Student Groups Did
- Group 1: Created 12 short videos on different sustainability topics. Their goal was to make the content attractive, easy to understand, and visually engaging, offering practical tips for young people to adopt sustainable habits.
- Group 2: Visited a partner school in Vantaa and met pupils onsite. They designed an interactive Kahoot quiz about sustainability themes and played it twice with one class to spark interest and motivate further learning between visits.
Both groups found the experience inspiring and agreed that similar activities should continue in the future to promote GreenComp goals among young learners.