Description
The project addresses the need to educate children/students in the town of Smolyan about sustainable use of resources. The project aims at teaching children the 4Rs (reduction, reuse, recycling and recovery) during creative extracurricular activities. First, a review of the topic in the existing school curriculum will be carried out and 20 best practices for creative extracurricular activities about sustainable use of resources for children aged 5-7 and 7-15 will be identified. Second, the curriculum and examples of creative activities will be prepared for children aged 5-7. Third, 45 teachers and NGO staff will be trained to teach the 4Rs and build networks. Finally, 100 children will learn about the 4Rs during 5 creative workshops on waste recycling. The project will benefit the children, their parents, teachers, peers, NGOs and the local community in general.
Summary of project results
The specific long-term goal of the project was to contribute (directly and indirectly) to developing habits based on the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose principle in children aged 5-7 and 7-15 and thus help change the dominant consumer approach to (non)renewable natural resources. The implemented project activities helped prepare a set of methodological and informational materials which can support teachers and people involved in informal education to develop and raise children’s and young people’s environmental awareness. Next, the seminars and creative workshops held helped test in real conditions the creative teaching approaches proposed. The project, its activities and products were welcomed by the target group members. In their opinion, the success was mostly due to the interesting topic and its unconventional interpretation in the project activities. The teaching aids and practical modules that were developed enabled teachers, volunteers, parents and children learn how to introduce the sustainable development principles (4R) in their daily life. The logical framework of the project included two stages. During the preparatory stage a snapshot was made of the current status and best practices were studied, models for creative presentation of the sustainable development theme were developed and a model curriculum on the topic of sustainable development for pupils aged 5-7 was prepared. The written documents drafted were published in a collection with a circulation of 300 copies and were disseminated among the participants in the project activities and other stakeholders. The second stage of the project included the organization of seminars for teachers and representatives of the civil sector and the pilot application of some of the lessons from the curriculum for pupils aged 5-7. 3 two-day seminars and 5 art workshops were held. The total number of participants in the workshops exceeded 100. A dynamic website in Bulgarian and English was created:
www.ecograph.eu. An important factor for the project success was the fact that it was implemented in a far-flung region which has been often excluded from the campaigns and initiatives of the public and NGO sector.
Summary of bilateral results