Results

Ten eight-year-old children sit in a circle around Mrs. Niemeyer and listen to her eagerly as she speaks about plants that grow near local rivers. She is one of the teachers of BUND ("Friends of the Earth"), which runs an initiative for early environmental awareness and education.

The children get to experience nature by planting their own seeds, watching the native animals and many other hands-on activities. All of them are so excited they can´t wait to attend the next meeting and some parents  have even started asking for an "adults-only-class", because they think their kids now know more about their surrounding nature and the environment than they do. In fact, the children are so enthusiastic about their new knowlegde they can´t stop talking about it, leading to very high demand from even more schools.

Challenge

Schools and other children´s organisations in the Stade region always wanted to implement environmental education more than they were able to. The BUND was high in demand but had only few volunteers, limited resources and no option of employing a full-time member of staff. They tried to teach as many classes as they were able to but still had the feeling that more had to be done.

Actions Taken

In 2006 the BUND got in contact with HNUI, who decided to sponsor the initiative. They now employ two teachers and offer three different kinds of environmental training:

- Regular workshops for school classes and other children´s clubs

- Field excursions for any group of up to 11 children

- Ecological birthday parties

In each of these training units the children learn about different topics such as birds or where honey comes from. Their awareness of the environment is now very high and some of the older ones have even started their own small projects for environmental protection.