The project of the National Trust EcoFund, implemented with the support of the German Ministry of Environment, Water, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, aims at improving the public awareness in relation to climate change issues.
The project focuses its activities on educational institutions – schools and kindergartens. Interactive educational activities were organized in several Bulgarian schools and kindergartens. These activities mark the beginning of a similar future initiatives.
NTEF organized and conducted workshops for 20 kindergarten teachers and 30 teachers from schools in Burgas, Yambol, Plovdiv and Pavel Banya. The workshops were designed to prepare the teachers in their future creative and educational work with kids and students on the topic of climate change.
The kindergartens, participating in the project, received creative materials and the children had the opportunity to create art projects related to climate change. Special exhibitions with the created art projects were organized in the kindergartens.
In the schools, exhibitions with educational posters were organized in order to provide information on the topic of climate change as well as ideas for mitigation and adaptation on a personal level. The exhibitions were accompanied with discussions on climate and generation of ideas for future initiatives.
Students from schools and universities also had the opportunity to form teams and participate in a competition for the development of an interesting project or video related to raising public awareness on climate change issues.
As a starting point to the initiatives, NTEF gathered and analyzed results of conducted national surveys over the last 20 years on the public awareness related to issues such as environmental protection and climate change. In addition to this, tests were conducted to confirm the trends and to monitor the results of the project.
The project activities ended with a conclusive conference which took place on December 15th in Plovidv. The conference gave an opportunity for discussing the educational methods on climate change and the design of effective public awareness initiatives. Key note speakers were experts from Bulgaria and Germany. The conference was attended by climate change experts, representatives of the ministries, representatives of the schools and the kindergartens, NGOs, and media.
