The project RIDE AND SMILE has just started!
Which European school will win the bike-to-school contest in the next two years?
RIDE AND SMILE promotes the use of the bicycle in urban environments as a responsible choice and an effective option for commuting, and it promotes it in the most important context for the future generations: the school.
Through games and contests among children attending schools from different countries, RIDE AND SMILE creates a competition to challenge and educate about themes of sustainable mobility and environment.
RIDE AND SMILE aims to develop an app and a web platform specifically targeted to primary school pupils. By using the app, the European schools involved in the SMILE network will start a competition involving teachers, pupils and families. In this way, the whole school community can participate as a school team, while learning the benefits of riding a bike. In addition, the pupils will improve their digital skills and English language, since the app will be developed in English.
The project idea is based on the experience of the European Cycling Challenge – ECC, an urban cyclists’ team competition taking place every year in May, one of the biggest European cycling events, coming to involve 52 cities from 17 Countries, with 46.000 people cycling 4.000.000 km in a month. The gamification approach encourages people to use bicycles as much as possible: participants tracks their bike-trips with a free tracking App contributing to their Team mileage, and through online leaderboards they can check their City Team position in real-time.
But it’s not all about digital: RIDE AND SMILE carries its best practices all across Europe, through a series of events, meetings, games and lessons in the schools involved, contributing to create a shared sustainable mobility culture.
Moreover, RIDE AND SMILE will celebrate the end of the project with a symbolic bike trip from Rome to Brussels: a zero-emission 1.600 km ride on two wheels across six countries to bring the project results directly to the heart of the EU. The children will be able to follow the trip day by day through the RIDE&SMILE interactive platform, understanding that it is actually possible to cover long distances just riding a bike. They will discover that cycling is a wonderful adventure and a way to discover or learn.
A team of Associations (ReBike ALTERmobility and Bike2School from Italy, Eco Logic from Macedonia, Eurogeo from Belgium), Schools (Istituto Comprensivo Salacone from Italy, Pestalozzi from Macedonia, Scoala Gimnaziala Dr. Balasi Jozsef from Romania) and Universities (University of Salzburg) was formed to manage this project.
RIDE AND SMILE is part of a series of projects starting from SMILE (Soft Mobility Integrated Learning in English) approved in 2015. Since then, other projects were carried on: SMILE and SMILE AND PLAY, both concerned the use of bicycle, learning of English language and gamification approaches.
