Humus per la Biosfera – Indoor Environmental Education

After the summer holidays, lessons in the schools around Mount Etna started again.

Repeating one of the most important projects’ activities, we started the second run of our indoor school lessons on environmental education. The focus is on the relevance of soil for climate protection and humus build-up. We teach the primary school students with the help of a PowerPoint presentation created with the input of former student trainees and international volunteers.

This year, in addition to the primary school children, we now also teach older pupils, for whom we have created a separate presentation.

The lessons are always a big success! The pupils are very attentive and eager to learn. At the end they are aware that the issue of climate change is happening in front of their own doorstep and action is needed and realisable even by the children themselves. This insight gives them a positive impulse to take home with them. We hear through many feedbacks from the parents that the children at home enthusiastically tell about what they have learned in school and, for example, demand household waste composting.

Our volunteers and trainees are important team members of the educational staff, as the children are particular curious to get to know these young foreigners and listen to their explanations with their mostly new learned Italian words. The volunteers themselves profit from the pedagogic experience and might be multiplier after return to their home countries.

Outdoor lessons will follow so that the newly acquired knowledge can be internalised. During the period of the Humus project, 3000 students will be educated in the project area.

The presentation is available in different languages on our project website www.terrebiosfera.org.