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City Air | Civic Europe
Environment and sustainability

City Air

Let’s regain our right to clean air

Creators

Who is behind this?

Alexandra Dumitrascu

Romanian Smart City Association

http://www.romaniansmartcity.ro

Romania

Who is joining forces?

Nature Talks

https://www.naturetalks.ro

Romania


Idea

Idea pitch

The initiator and coordinator of the City Air program is The Romanian Smart City Association, along with its partners. City Air is an air quality monitoring program in schools on a national scale, aiming to become the biggest movement for air quality improvement. A movement for cleaner air in schools, safer living and most of all, a movement aiming to generate better policies, to determine city stakeholders to take action to reduce pollution impact and to provide a safer environment.

Where will your project idea take place?

Grosi, Sadu, Scortoasa, Selimbar, Filipestii de Padure

What is the specific societal challenge faced by this region?

It is important that communities understand that environmental problems are present in our daily lives and it is up to us to find solutions and fight them. We want to implement our project in these communities, where air pollution is not monitored. Once we start monitor pollution in schools, we aim to involve the communities in this process, and make them realise that it is important to cooperate with each other in order for children to grow and learn in a healthy environment. We can do this with proper technology and communication skills.

Who are you doing it for?

We address our project mainly to children, they are the key when it comes to a brighter future. We will explain to them how important is to take care of nature and how can protect themselves from dangerous phenomena. Then, we want to talk to parents, let them know what is the quality of they air their children breathe, we will talk to teachers and tell them that they should talk more about environment. We also address our initiative to local authorities and we will help them come up with a plan that aims to reduce air pollution.
Impact in community:
We aim to reach a minimum target of at least 1500 students, 200 teachers and indirectly he children s parents.

How do you plan to get there?

1. Our team will present to the communities the project. We will make a calendar and several calls to action.
2. We will create focus groups with the local administrations and school principals, then with the representatives of the students in the schools. We will listen to their point of view regarding air pollution and what they already know they can do.
3. We will send the technical team to install the air quality sensors and to connect them to the platform of the project. Our data will be open and transparent, in order for everyone to see in real time what are the pollution level in their communities and even compare them to other communities.
4. We will arrange working groups with students and explain to them how air pollution affects the quality of learning and thus them directly, their future, how it affects their health and how they can fight it.
5. After a few weeks of monitoring pollution, we will provide a guideline for each school on the recommending of our experts. The guide will provide information about pollution, the data gathered from the sensors and solutions for the community.
6. We will monitor and inform communities, in order to see how the pollution levels changed and to provide feedback.
7. We will provide monthly meetings for the first 12 months of the project, and quarterly for next year. We want to monitor and provide expertise on the long term

What are the expected results?

We will create competition among the beneficiaries, so that all communities we interact with will realise how important it is to reduce pollution. We also want our students to act more about environment and to learn how to be responsible.
We will provide mentorship and support and we will encourage a creative competition of ideas of the communities involved in the program.

How does your idea strengthen active citizenship at a local and community level?

People will usually get involved in a problem that affects them directly. By showing them how pollutions affects them DIRECTLY and the children they would give anything from, they will have a better understanding of the real issue. Our focus is to prove how acting local can make a change. Once informed, people will pay more attention on the local decisions that affects their local community. We will provide the local authorities best practices guides so that they will know how to address these issues and become a better local pillar that communities may rely on. During the program, the students will be provided with basic information about how local decisions are made, how they can create an initiative, how it can get support, how to create change and impact.

Why is this idea important to you?

The project is developed by The Romanian Smart City Association and will be implemented with the partner of the project, Nature Talks.
Smart City, our Organization sector of activity, covers all the 6 directions settled by the EC, and one of them is Smart Environment.
Our vision is to create a strong innovative sustenaibly developed nation, digitally educated, with citizen involved and accessible for all.
Our goal is to make valuable changes in our communities and to share the results. To create change. To make an impact. To make citizens aware of their role. To leave a legacy. To evolve sustainably!

€ 34500,-

Total budget

€ 34500,-

Funding requested from Civic Europe

Major expenses

We will co-finance the project in order to achieve the expected results and to cover all 4 regions selected in the project.
Equipments / including sensors 15500 EUR
Travel and accomodation 3500 EUR (including round tables and focus groups where not online)
Personnel costs 10000 EUR
Printing and graphics - Flyers, leaflets, guides and other dissemination materials 5500 EUR
All sections not included and completion of personnel, experts, data interpretation, online platform are covered by us

What do you need from the Civic Europe community?

We would highly appreciate best practices models and to see how other communities managed to improve the air quality, and provide community driven ideas and projects!

Team

ARSC

Idea created on April 25, 2021
Last edit on April 26, 2021

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