Description
Over 22% of the surface of Romania represents protected areas, which have a major contribution to maintaining the ecological balance. Environmental education is not included in the school curricula and the lack of awareness about the importance of natural values results an increased pressure over these areas under the pretext of development. The objective of the project is to increase the awareness of the public concerning the importance of protected areas by encouraging parents and children to visit these sites, by increasing the capacity of teachers and employees of protected areas administration to provide quality environmental education and by involving students in practical Junior Ranger activities. The project will result in a national education programme "Children's Passport in Protected Areas", improved opportunities to adopt and implement ecological education programmes and increased awareness of the importance of protected areas for sustainable development, involving 1710 students and teachers. The target groups are children and parents, teachers from schools, protected area management staff in the country, members of environmental NGOs.
Summary of project results
The project aimed to contribute, with innovative solutions, to an increased level of awareness among citizens at national level on environmental issues in general, and on the role of protected areas in the sustainable development in particular. Thus, a national educational programme was developed, one that stimulates children and parents to visit protected areas, which can reinstate the importance of nature conservation activities. The educational programme is called “Children’s Passport for Protected Areas”. This is presented as an interactive diary and game in which 38 protected areas of Romania can be discovered. The passports are located in stands that can be found at the visitor centres of each protected area. Children have to collect a series of customized stickers and stamps from each visited protected area. Through the activities of the project, this educational tool was promoted in 25 schools. 2,000 school children received the passport, 5 teams of Junior Rangers that participated in camps organised by ProPark Foundation are now promoting the travel diary in their schools, and more than 500,000 people from Romania have learned about the importance of environmental education through this programme. Nature Education, known also as Environmental Education, is not included in the school curriculum, not even as an optional topic. Teachers, especially those who are not specialised in topics connected to nature conservation, lack possibilities to learn about efficient educational tools or programmes. Thus, an online platform called the Nature’s Virtual Library was created, to centralise and promote environmental education publications and to make them available for teachers, rangers or for NGO staff members. In order to fill-in this Virtual Library, but also to tackle the issue of environmental education in schools, the project team has developed a programme dedicated to 3rd and 4th graders, called Environmental Education and Protected Areas. To make sure that the textbook could be successfully used in schools and that its usage is accessible to teachers, 3 training sessions were organised for 46 teachers and 75 demonstrative lessons were carried out in different schools, based on this textbook. Using this approach, all these teachers had the chance to learn new teaching techniques and to immediately use the freshly acquired knowledge.
Summary of bilateral results