ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Curiosity and mindfulness
We offer environmental education from Germany to Indonesia. Here, children, young people and adults can learn how to take effective action against global challenges.
CHILDREN + YOUTH
What is environmental education?
ESD (education for sustainable development)
Originally, “environmental education” was primarily concerned with ecological issues and the conservation of natural resources and ecosystems. It was not until the Rio Conference in 1992 that social and economic issues were increasingly addressed in order to strive for holistic sustainable development. This educational approach is more in line with “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD).
The aim here is to impart the skills needed to actively shape the sustainable development of society. However, ESD and environmental education need not be mutually exclusive and their boundaries are often blurred.
Why is environmental education important?
Today, the world’s population needs around 1.7 Earths to cover its entire resource requirements. In Germany it is almost three earths!
In 2020, the global demand for resources already exceeded the resources that can be regenerated by the earth each year on August 22, on Earth Overshoot Day. As a result, global challenges arise on a social, ecological and economic level. From biodiversity loss and climate change to combating hunger and poverty and dealing with the scarcity of resources. In order to overcome these challenges and comply with planetary boundaries, society, including lifestyles and economic styles as well as consumption and production patterns, must be made more sustainable.
Internationally, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are regarded as groundbreaking in this regard. Education is seen as a necessary prerequisite for driving forward this sustainable development. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) thus contributes “to the realization of all other Sustainable Development Goals”.
We also come to your school!
As an extracurricular partner, we form the interface between theory and practice. In addition to our learning units, your students will gain an insight into the work of an environmental protection organization. Whether 1st or 13th grade, we adapt our offers according to the age and educational level of your students! No matter what type of educational institution you are, we are always happy to come to you and look forward to your inquiries.
Please note that we are particularly active in our region (Rhineland-Palatinate) in order to avoid long journeys. If your school is located outside of RLP, you are still welcome to write to us: depending on the request and scope, we can also come to you!
We offer two options for cooperation:
Long-term school partnerships
We are firmly convinced that environmental education has the greatest impact when it is continuous and accompanying. As part of a partnership, your school will receive a quota of 65 school hours, which can be redeemed in the following areas according to your needs:
– Workshops / project days and weeks
– Sustainable school festivals
– Environmental training for class representatives / student representatives
– Private lessons in individual classes
This allows us to monitor and optimize the development of the individual measures during the school year. Throughout the year, students are constantly given new impetus and can celebrate successes and receive feedback. Individual classes/grades can set themselves goals in environmental protection and implement and evaluate these together with the class representatives. Children and young people who are particularly interested in the environment can develop their own ideas in workshops and implement them together at school.
Short-term cooperation
In addition to our long-term school partners, we also offer schools short-term cooperation to provide important impetus in the area of environmental education. The individual modules range from at least 45 minutes (individual lesson) to an entire school week (project week). Here a school can choose its offer from a range of learning units.
Our content is based on age and the current curriculum. This allows us to reach more children and educational institutions in order to achieve a greater impact. We have also found that some schools would like to enter into a long-term partnership with Project Wings after a short-term collaboration.
You want us to come to your school?
Or do you still have questions?
Contact us at: bildung@project-wings.de
OUR PROJECTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
REGIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
It therefore makes sense for us to focus on ecological issues in our educational work. At the same time, however, we do not view these problems in isolation. We combine environmental protection with humanitarian and economic challenges. Here we are guided by the three-dimensional model, in which the three dimensions of ecology, economy and social aspects are mutually dependent and therefore cannot be changed or optimized independently of each other. The effects of decisions must therefore always be considered in relation to all dimensions.
We also want to refrain from using threat scenarios. Instead, we focus on developing new visions and design options. In our view, it is more important to enable pupils to act competently in terms of sustainable development rather than to point the moral finger. Because only through a joint exchange can we change the structures of our society in the long term and achieve the goal of sustainable development.
INDONESIA
GREEN
CLASS
Suriono Masno founded the “Green Class” with his son, Imam, in 2016. Together with other volunteer teachers, they give up to 120 children and young people the opportunity to learn about environmental issues through play. With the help of excursions, meetings with other school classes and visits from our partners, the children learn how to treat our planet responsibly. Current challenges are explained and sensible solutions can now be discussed and tried out in the newly built Green Education Center in the recycling village.
Every week, the children can take part in all activities and the additional English course free of charge. The newly acquired knowledge is passed on by the children to their parents, manifested and gradually integrated into everyday life. Thanks to the additional free opportunity to learn English, their career prospects will increase.
The aim of the Green Class is to raise awareness and find solutions for various environmental challenges – for both children and adults.
INTERNATIONAL
EXPLANATION
We provide more clarity in sustainable everyday life. We convey complex content to a wide range of target groups in an interactive and fun way. Our mission is to make environmental protection socially acceptable. To this end, we are reaching out to people in Germany and Indonesia via various media to educate them and provide them with easy-to-integrate solutions for their everyday lives.
Whether via social media and funny reels or via lectures at Indonesian universities. We are trying every way we can to mobilize as many people as possible for the preservation of our planet. The ranger patrol, the waste collection service and the Ecobrick station also actively approach the local population to raise awareness in their specialist areas.
BECOME A WINGS MEMBER
Support the areas of nature conservation, animal welfare and humanitarian aid with a regular donation.
Thanks to your help, we can make a contribution to environmental protection in Germany and Indonesia!
As an environmental protection organization, environmental education is particularly important to us at Project Wings. We see environmental education as the key to making environmental protection socially acceptable and protecting the environment in the long term. Here you can find out why environmental education is important and how we at Project Wings are active in environmental education.
What is environmental education?
Environmental education is an educational approach that focuses in particular on the environment. Knowledge is imparted here that is intended to contribute to learning how to treat the environment responsibly. Traditional environmental education focuses primarily on ecological problems. Whereas in “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD), social and economic challenges are considered equally. Environmental education is also a component here. There is a variety of offers designed to bring people closer to nature and the conscious interaction with it.
How we understand environmental education
Our understanding of education is based on the Education for Sustainable Development approach. We do not believe in focusing exclusively on the environmental problems of our time. We do not raise our index finger to encourage pupils to behave in an environmentally friendly way. Transferring this enormous pressure to the next generation is frustrating for adolescents. Ultimately, frustration can lead to people no longer wanting to deal with the issue. We want to avoid that.
That is why we also look at the challenges and problems, but always with solutions and a lot of motivation in our luggage.
We need a generation that is motivated to face the current challenges. And is competent to actively tackle them. We therefore focus on new possible solutions and show students how they can help shape their own environment in a sustainable way. We work in a future-oriented way and communicate skills and opportunities on an equal footing in order to bring about lasting change in our society.
Why is environmental education important?
Environmental education plays a key role in addressing the growing environmental challenges and their consequences facing our society.
The last few years have shown that climate change is progressing and the effects are devastating. Challenges and consequences that affect all our lives. And above all affect those who are often already living in poverty. Famines occur more frequently and more intensively. Animals die in search of food and drinking water. People have to leave their homes and flee from environmental disasters. Triggered by prolonged droughts or floods.
Aid organizations can barely keep up because they lack the financial resources.
If we close our eyes for a moment and think about it, most of us have images in our heads that underline the scale of the problem.
This was caused not least by the floods and fires that were now reaching more and more of Germany and Europe. For a long time, the problems seemed far enough away. After all, they didn’t happen on their own doorstep. However, the fact that what happens in other countries, on other continents and in our oceans also has an impact on all of us is often overlooked.
Deforestation of entire rainforests, plastic swirls the size of entire cities, mountains of garbage as high as skyscrapers and the hunting of rare animals also rarely happen in Europe. But if you take a closer look at these issues, you quickly realize that everything that happens in and with the environment has a long or short impact on us all.
Only when the effects get closer and it becomes uncomfortable do people become active and start to act.
But we at Project Wings want to start before that. We have set ourselves the goal of making environmental protection socially acceptable. Environmental protection concerns us all. After all, environmental protection is not just about protecting and saving the world and nature, but also our species.
“Nature doesn’t need people – people need nature.” – Henry Ford
Through our work, we want to help people think outside the box and look beyond their own doors. We want to show them what is happening on the other side and that our own actions have an impact on the entire system. To this end, we run awareness campaigns and bring environmental issues closer to people through our project work. Both on a regional and global level.
In Germany, our focus is on environmental education in educational institutions. Environmental education is often neglected in schools. It falls down at the back. However, according to a study by the BMBF, pupils and teachers would like to see more reference to sustainability in lessons. And this is exactly where we come in.
We are also committed to environmental education in Sumatra. This is how we manage to connect two continents and countries and learn from each other.
Environmental education in Germany
We at Project Wings have been active with our environmental education program at schools in Germany since 2019 and run exciting workshops. Since then, we have continued to develop our educational program and have been able to inspire schools to cooperate with us.
Our workshops and project days are not about pointing the finger and pointing out what is going wrong. We interact with the children and young people as equals, engage in an exciting exchange, introduce them to our project on Sumatra and show them that it is possible to find and implement solutions. Following the approach – Find a way, not an excuse.
Together with the schools, teachers and pupils, we think about what content is exciting for the class and work out a great program. We make sure that we provide a varied program of theory and practice.
It is important to us to inspire children and young people and to reach them with our topics. Because the earlier they learn that it is important to protect our world, the sooner they can integrate environmentally friendly behavior into their everyday lives and, above all, consolidate it.
We show that environmental protection is not just for the “eco-auntie” next door. We are a motley crew ourselves, from roofers to economists and environmental activists, all of whom are in agreement. It is time to take the initiative, find solutions and work together across borders without restrictions. And this is exactly what we pass on in our workshops. We will come to your school ourselves with lots of motivation and fun.
We stand in front of the class as the founders and team of the aid organization and share experiences, adventures and impressions that we have had ourselves. We show what a commitment to environmental protection can achieve. That sometimes all it takes is a lot of courage and motivation. We report on the work in an aid organization and thus show a different professional field and how you can easily get involved as a volunteer.
As a young and committed team, we have already inspired many schools and pupils with our work and motivated them to act and engage in an environmentally conscious way in the long term. We always look forward to the great exchange with the students.
But we are also committed to environmental education and awareness-raising work in Sumatra. Here, too, it is important to learn at a young age what impact one’s own actions have on nature and the environment. And that this has an impact on your own life.
Environmental education on Sumatra
The children and young people from our project region are not familiar with plastic waste, deforestation and huge palm oil plantations from television. For them, these challenges and the consequences are part of everyday life. It is therefore particularly important to show them the direct effects of their actions and how to deal with them.
Our project region has the Green Class and the Education Center for this purpose. In addition to English lessons, regular courses and workshops on environmental education are held there. Here, too, important environmental issues are communicated in a playful way and solutions are shown. But they were also given practical tips and taught why it is important to dispose of waste correctly.
What happens without a functioning waste system? Used diapers, plastic bags, clothes and all sorts of other things end up in nature and rivers. Rivers in which people bathe or wash their clothes and dishes at the same time. This not only has a negative impact on the environment, but also on people’s health. This is also taught in the Green Class.
To help local people dispose of their waste properly, we have implemented a waste disposal system in our project region. This will be gradually expanded. This also includes waste garbage cans that have been set up in the village and at the recycling village. This is where the Green Class comes in, for example.
The Green Class shows children and young people how to separate waste correctly so that they learn directly which waste belongs in which garbage can. But the timetable also includes environmental education about native animals and the upcycling and recycling of materials.
With the recycling village, we not only want to isolate plastic waste from the environment and keep it safe, but above all create a meeting and educational place for locals and tourists.
This is why a holistic learning space is now also being created at the recycling village. A building consisting of various units designed to help provide education and environmental education at various levels for local people.
The recycling village thus offers sufficient space for education at various levels.
Are you looking for an exciting environmental education project?
Then you’ve come to the right place. We have a broad portfolio of workshops on sustainable topics with exciting learning units. We offer DIYs, practical and interactive exercises, theoretical and practical knowledge and lots of fun.
Or are you looking for a cool project that you can support as a class or school? Even then, we look forward to hearing from you.
Together we are strong. Let’s make the world a little greener together. Here you can support us directly in the implementation of our environmental education or another of our projects.