It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Fundatia Comunitara Oradea Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Claudia Last name of representative: Abrudan Gender: Female Nationality: Romania Function: Executive Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: REPUBLICII 30, Crisul Shopping Center, Comuniteca 2nd Floor Town: ORADEA Postal code: 410159 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40743295486 E-mail:director@fundatiacomunitaraoradea.ro Website:https://fundatiacomunitaraoradea.ro/
Through the PLANTROPOLIS program we supported 21 schools and kindergartens from Oradea, with grants worth a maximum of 2,000 euros each. We have granted 27,000 euros for projects to set up mini urban gardens in these schools or kindergartens.
The Oradea Community Foundation offered the board game "Smart City" created by the company VPK Packaging Salonta to each school/kindergarten registered and selected in the project. Through this board game, the children learned through the game about the selective sorting of waste into 5 fractions for recycling. https://www.vpksmartcity.ro/cum-se-foloseste-tabletopia/
After the stage of learning through the game, the practical part followed, i.e. the selective sorting of waste, recycling and the use of the biodegradable fraction for compost. Thus, the students, together with their teachers, set up a mini garden in the school yard, using the compost for the permaculture bins and the crates where the seeds and seedlings were planted. For the other recyclable fractions, we facilitated the recovery with the help of authorized operators, and the money obtained was reinvested by the beneficiaries in educational projects of their choice.
Some schools have created sensory gardens with the aim of exposing children to new sensations when they walk barefoot on different types of soil, thus teaching them about the diversity of natural environments.
As part of the project, we created a mascot, the Hedgehog Lady, who visited all 21 kindergartens and schools and delighted the little ones who asked her the nicest and most surprising questions. The little ones were excited to tell the Hedgehog Lady how they built their own gardens in the school yard, how they planted and cared for the plants and what are the new things they learned.
Education
Environment
Sustainability
Recycle
Selective waste collection
Learning is a continuous process when it comes to the environment. Preschool and primary school children have no way of knowing what a plant's needs are until they themselves are responsible for growing and caring for a garden. Creating an urban garden with permaculture containers is a first step towards a green, sustainable future. Children, parents, educators and teachers actively participated in the construction of permaculture containers, noticed the need to layer a gardening container and filled them with soil and compost.
Children from kindergartens and schools that were funded learned directly, through practical and interactive methods, what the life cycle of different plants is, as well as what are the environmental conditions for these plants to bear fruit. The harvest is actually a sustainable point within this program. For example, from the few beans harvested, next year they will maintain the garden, obtaining more beans, with which to cook their own food. From one year to the next they will harvest, then replant various seeds, seedlings and bulbs to expand the mini urban garden. It is a type of non-formal learning, on the children's understanding and more than that, to their liking.
Reconnecting with nature is different when in the yard of the school and kindergarten, children have their own mini urban garden.
During the warm season, the science lessons take place directly outside, in the garden, where something new is analyzed every day.
It is a difficult task to bring together members of the local community and propose environmental topics for discussion and learning. We did it. We brought together grandparents, parents and children who initially only wanted to help, but later, they realized the value of such a program for the lives of each of us. It is important for the entire community to get involved and contribute to maintaining a clean and healthy environment.
We can not omit that besides the entire gardening process, emphasis was placed on the selective collection of waste. Children must understand the logic behind such a collection, why it is important to have a clean environment and a sustainable future. Through images, explanations and practical exercises, during the development of this program we managed to make these hard-to-understand topics accessible to children of any age. More than that, the involvement of the parents allowed us to greatly expand the range of beneficiaries who realized the importance of a sustainable lifestyle. The information gathered at the kindergarten was enthusiastically told at home to family and friends, thus circulating to several categories of people, which brings with it the cultural benefits that we anticipated. „We grow together with nature" has become more than the slogan of our program. It became part of the lives of every person in our small community. Our main goal of reconnecting people with nature and having a sense of belonging to a community concerned with the way they live and a healthy future has been largely achieved through this program. And we want to carry on the mission. we want a healthy community with healthy principles and the desire for change for the better.
The aspect of inclusion is one of particular importance for us. It is often remarked to us that perhaps we should direct our attention to different categories of people, „especially young people and adults, because, some people say, they understand complicated subjects much better”.
And this is where we intervene - those who consider that children can understand complicated subjects such as selective collection even from preschool. Marginalization and exclusion based on age is excluded for our activities. We consider that from the youngest age children must know what a clean environment is and how important it is to take care of it, as they can. Our objective is to teach them to learn, to adapt the information and practical exercises in such a way as to facilitate the learning process.
Moreover, within the program, we also worked with a school that dealt with children with special educational needs, social category capable of understanding and showing care for nature and everything that surrounds them. We choose the difficult one - we adapt to their learning needs and continue our mission. The multiple activities organized together with them proved to us how much such activities matter and how receptive children with special educational requirements are to everything that nature means.
Beneficiaries who received funding were schools and kindergartens with a Hungarian profile. Is a minority that we preferred to work with, because the language you speak and the nationality you have do not define you as a personality. The inclusion of the Hungarian community was a real success for the program, we managed to distribute the materials in the language they speak to facilitate their level of understanding.
Finally, we are delighted with how much we managed to change the mentality of society and we want to continue this goal.
The environmental problem is one that is more and more glaring lately.
After we identified it, our goal was to act in such a way as to reduce it, or at least, in the first phase, to stop it.
In order to have an impact in reducing the environmental problem we are facing, we have created a bridge between civil society, schools, entrepreneurs and environmental specialists. Thus we managed to gather together human, educational and financial resources in such a way as to contribute to solving the problem of selective collection. Having the support of specialists and available financial resources, the teaching staff managed to implement a wide range of activities with the children. The specialists we identified delivered great information on how to reduce the negative footprint on the environment. In the same way, they suggested various tips and tricks to better understand and apply the received information. Following the training of the teaching staff, they were able to make their subjects accessible in such a way that they could be understood by the children. The children, easily assimilating the received information, happily shared it with their parents, grandparents and friends. Somehow, the parents were attracted to learn more about a correct ecological thinking from their children. The entrepreneurs were delighted that they managed to contribute to the change, the environmental specialists - that they had motivated participants to implement what they learned, the children - happy to learn new things in an informal way and the parents - delighted to notice how important it is to teach children relevant topics from the earliest age. Both direct and indirect beneficiaries had a lot to learn and take over from the activities organized by us. Thus connecting with nature, understanding the process of selective collection, recycling, reuse, reduction was very simple and easy to understand.
To begin with, we approached the inspector from the Bihor school inspectorate to consult us regarding the field of environmental education that interests us. Later, we approached financiers to invest financial resources in this program.
The call for projects was launched, through the Bihor County Inspectorate, to all schools and kindergartens in Oradea. It was a long process of consultations on environmental issues and various workshops. The environmental specialists were very involved in the preparation of materials adapted to the children's age and their level of understanding. We focused a lot on delivering information to pedagogues, because in this way, we provide an important resource for the smooth development of the program. Some of the most discussed topics were: the construction and maintenance of permaculture bins, the importance of making compost and its correct making, learning the technique of the 3 R's: reduction, reuse, recycling, reducing food waste, selective collection, the process of saving limited resources. The involvement of stakeholders was important because we, independently, would not have succeeded in distributing the information and grants to the direct beneficiaries. the fact that environmental specialists guided us through the entire process was again a huge benefit for the smooth running of the Plantropolis program.
The collaboration and openness shown by the stakeholders was an additional source of motivation for us and for our desire to continue this activity.
Plantropolis is a program that involves a close collaboration between the environmental experts from the community who guided and coordinated the construction of the kindergartens and the design of the structure of the activity plans that took place during the program, NGOs that designed and organized practical activities related to environmental protection through which the participants acquire new knowledge and skills by providing practical guides to the teachers, the teaching staff starting from the knowledge gained regarding teaching and who in turn have acquired new knowledge that they will apply in the future during the teaching of lessons.
Through this collaboration between environmental experts, specialists from NGOs and teaching staff, the conditions were formed for the introduction of a new type of activities in the educational plan with the aim of improving the education of the children in the program by addressing topics related to environmental issues, this type of information reaches children only tangentially, as there is no independent subject for environmental education in the school curriculum. Also, from the experience we have gained through other educational programs, we have learned that through children we manage to cause behavioral changes among adults who are forced to implement the small positive changes that children learn to put into practice among households after participating in non-formal activities.
The school units participating in the program had the chance to rearrange the concrete courtyards, turning them into green oases in the middle of the city. Also, the planning activities of urban mini-gardens through the construction of permaculture containers, led to the involvement of parents who got involved in the planning stage, thus strengthening the bond between parents and teachers on the one hand, but also strengthening the relationships between parents whose children attend the same school. Through the children's participation in the whole process, starting with the arrangement part, continuing with planting and caring for the plants and finally with the harvesting of the fruits that they all enjoyed in the end, the relationships between the children and the teaching staff were established and strengthened, as well as the relationships of friendship between children.
Last but not least, both the children and their parents and the teaching staff gained new theoretical and practical knowledge regarding topics related to environmental issues, how we can protect nature and build a green and sustainable future.
Through the activities carried out, all participants had the opportunity to reconnect with nature, to learn how to respect the environment, this leading in the extended perspective to the formation of healthy behaviors.
The entire structure of the program is currently being built and includes the sketches of the permaculture containers, the planting and plant care guides, the composting guides and the activity models to be carried out during the program.
Thus, the project is very easily replicable and implementable in any school that wants to build such a mini garden with the aim of completing the educational offer with activities aimed at educating children for a greener and more sustainable future and also to disconnect them from the on-line activities and reconnect them with the nature and with each other.
The investment for running such a program is small (maximum 2000 euros) and once built this garden is very easy to maintain, it requires minimal maintenance costs because the permaculture pots will be repopulated the following year with seedlings from the seeds from the fruits and already grown vegetables.
In recent years, it is increasingly obvious that Oradea has a low percentage in the selective collection process, and the local authorities together with the sanitation agent face immense difficulties in educating the population for the purpose of selective collection
Plantropolis in schools appeared as a desire to educate the young generation of children to reach the parents and thus, to contribute to the education of an ecological thinking following the identification of the problem for the environment.
The process was a long one: we held consultations with the community, representatives of the schools, where we had the support of the inspectorate and noted the pressing need that exists in our community, but also the desire to learn how to reduce this problem, coming from the community local. A wide series of consultation sessions and workshops on various environmental topics was proposed to all applicants within the program and thus, we managed to clarify a large part of the existing questions and problems.
One of the global changes addressed throughout the Plantropolis workshops is Sustainable Development and Climate Change. Children and their parents or grandparents are learning how to reduce, reuse and recycle, how to develop a sustainable behaviour, how to actively get involved in protecting our natural resources. It is simple to implement the 3 R's, because children's creativity is extraordinarily developed. At the same time, the parents were also extremely involved in using this technique at home. This continuity between kindergarten/school and home with the family contributes to a better fixation of new knowledge for all parties involved.
In the first edition of the Plantropolis program that took place during 2022 in 21 schools and kindergartens in Oradea, 200 practical workshops and activities were organized in which over 3000 children, over 200 parents and 60 teachers participated. Therefore, the number of beneficiaries is more than 3260 people without counting the beneficiaries who will continue to enjoy these kindergartens in the following years. Therefore, the multiplier of the actions of this program is very vast and continues and will continue in the following years.
The project currently continues with the second edition of the Plantropolis program, which was started in January in school units in Salonta municipality, Bihor county at the request of a local company that carries out its production activities in this city. We estimate a number of 750 child beneficiaries, over 50 parents and at least 10 teaching staff for the current program.
We are exploring the possibility of resuming this program in Oradea starting in September 2023 by implementing it in at least 20 more school units.
The project is very easy to replicate, since the entire structure of the program already exists, starting with the sketches of the permaculture containers, the planting and care guides and the models of activities to be carried out during the program. Practically, at this moment the only thing standing in the way of multiplying this program in as many schools as possible is the lack of financial resources. We really want to continue the implementation of this project because we believe that all school units should set up such kindergartens, which are absolutely necessary in the educational process of children and young people in the context of the dramatic changes that all of humanity is going through.
Through the Plantropolis program, participating children are exposed to a new field of interest in their development and in choosing a future career. As the concern for the development of new technologies that emphasize the protection of the environment and the planet's resources is constantly growing, through this program the children acquire basic knowledge that will shape them for the future, they will be able to discover a new field of interest for them, they will be able to develop new passions that will eventually lead them to choose a job in the field of sustainable agriculture, waste management, creating green technologies. The early exposure of children to such topics generates the right environment for the training of future specialists or perhaps even researchers in environmental issues, such a hot topic worldwide.
