Environmental Education is a multidisciplinary approach to learning, that develops the knowledge awareness attitudes, values, and skills that will enable individuals and community to contribute towards maintaining and improving the quality of the environment. This is one of the most important definitions of environmental education and highlights some keywords like: multidisciplinary, learning, develop and the quality of the environment. Attention! Environmental information is not necessarily environmental education. Environmental education teaches critical thinking, increases public awareness, leads the addressing and solving of the environmental problems, while environmental information doesn’t do that.
© Liana Cernov
Environmental education is the most important tool to grow responsible citizens for the future of our planet. And that’s the reason why we are decided to work and to cooperate with national and international partners to acquire new techniques and methods in this regard.
The next step was the participation in the training course “Environmental Training for Eco-trainers” organized by YEE (Youth and Environment Europe) and FӦJ e.V. (Voluntary Ecological Year) with the support and funding of Erasmus +. This training was held on 20th – 28th March 2015 in Wiek, Rügen Germany and brought together 30 young people from 12 countries. Oz Osborne, Nick Paddison and Esther Vallado were three coaches who introduced us to non-formal methods of environmental education.
The used methods during the training were: learning to learn, with the key elements such as preferences, planning, realizing, awareness, responsibility, goals and feedback; learning by doing; Klobe learning Cycle, which clearly explains how to learn; framework for planning trainings, with all the elements that we should take into account; how to interact in cases of challenging behavior by the group etc. Some other elements, which are important not only in environmental education but even in our daily life, are the motivation and inspiration. At the same time these are two main elements of environmental education, which an Eco-trainer should know to enhance the positive spirit of the group. Co-working is a challenge during the working groups, because not everybody is able to collaborate with the others and do his part, without trying to impose his ideas.
