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Description
The Lubelskie province is a largely agricultural region, mostly with big farms utilising vast quantities of plant protection agents and mineral fertilisers which reduces the number of beneficial insects and invertebrates. Based on our community interviews, we can see that inhabitants of Lublin villages have little knowledge about environmental protection activities. Our observations show that they still believe that environmental protection requires high financial outlays. Older people often know very little about ecology, while children’s ecological education is limited to several basic issues that by no means exhaust the topic. We will address this problem by approaching the topic of ecology from the perspective of biodiversity which can be both easy and attractive in rural areas. For children we will prepare explainers in the fairy-tale convention clarifying the role of insects and we will send them to all kindergartens and primary schools in the Lubelskie province. We will also prepare colouring pages devoted to environmental topics and a family educational board game which we will promote in schools and on our website. At the foundation we will run classes on biodiversity for children from our region, and the lesson plan will be sent to schools and kindergartens in our province. Ten workshops on organic gardening will be organised for adult province inhabitants, each crowned with starting a sustainable garden featuring info boards on plants and insects. All aids that will be made in physical format will be printed on recycled materials.
Summary of project results
The project was the response to the low ecological awareness of the inhabitants of Tomaszów County (Lubelskie Voivodeship). The research we carried out showed that in every age group, knowledge of biodiversity and its importance for humans and the environment is very low and deeply rooted in misconceptions, such as the high costs of environment-friendly solutions and complicated procedures of implementing them in daily life. The people surveyed were also unaware of the importance of their everyday decisions and choices for the quality of the environment around them.
The main task of the project was to raise the environmental awareness of residents - children, young people, adults and seniors - from the neglected communities of the Tomaszów poviat and to encourage them to care more about the environment at a local level. We developed creative tools for informal environmental education, such as fairy tales, board games and colouring books. We also delivered open and free gardening workshops during which the participants started their own insect-friendly organic gardens in public spaces and eco pot gardens. In the end, 10 insect-friendly gardens were created.
The educational fairy tale and colouring books that were created as part of the project were distributed among local kindergartens and schools, where they can also be used after the project ended. Through ecological workshops, participants learned how to create sustainable insect-friendly gardens, and 10 such gardens were created as part of the project.
Participants from different age groups (from the youngest to the oldest) were involved in creating the gardens, which contributed to further integration of different generations. Working together made it possible to establish or strengthen neighbourhood ties, which is particularly important for people at risk of social exclusion - senior citizens or those with a lower social or material status.