Nonformal and environmental education in Otava region

Project name: Nonformal and environmental education in Otava region (2017–2-CZ01-KA105–035767)

Project duration: 01/02/2018 – 31/01/2020

The project „Nonformal and environmental education in Otava region“ follows our previous international projects focused on over-board cooperation (CZE – GER). Main goal of the project is to intercorporate participants (volunteers) into daily work of our organization.

The participants will take part in children´s edu­cation and they will experience innovative processes in teaching, mainly research based education, teaching in nature and environmental education. The participants will became a valid part of our lecturer team and they will help us with educational stays for kids, both with preparation and teaching. Based on their language skills the participants will take part in planning, preparation and realization of multi-language stays (for kids from different countries). Same as our regular employees the participant will have an opportunity to visit other environmental centers and experience the variety of teaching techniques used elsewhere. Thus they will gain an overview about ecologically based activities and generally about environmental education realized in Czech Republic.

Since part of our educational programs takes part at educational farm the participants will also experience farm work. They will perform basic duties of our farm keepers, such as regular care about vegetable garden and farm animals (feeding, watering, cleaning). Participants will learn how to treat animals, how to care about different species kept at our educational farm and they will pass those knowledge and skills to children who come to the farm for agricultural educational programs. Except of environmental education the participants can take part in free time activities organized by leisure time center of “DDM Horaždovice”. According to their skills, interest and time capacity they can work as lecturers of different courses going from art, sport, language to handcraft activities. They can also visit courses for adults as regular participants and help with organization of public events held by our organization.

Main benefit of this project for both volunteer participants and our employees can be seen in increase of language skills (daily use of English, possibility to learn a bit of Czech/foreign language), sharing of experience and exchange of international point of view on children´s edu­cation. Participants can give us valuable comments about organization of free time activities and environmental education in their home country and they can learn how we do it in PROUD. We believe that the participants will became a true part of local community, mainly thanks to the broad spectrum of free time activities and public events we organize for local people (art workshops, talks, activities for families with children …). On the other hand meeting and working with a person from different country, with different cultural habits, can benefit not only our employees but also all inhabitants of Horažďovice city and the children who take part at stays and programs in PROUD.

As an output of this project we suppose to create new educational materials and work sheets which will be used in our educational programs even after the end of the project.