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EEIU Constanta Reports & Letters

Report, 22 October 2004 (from Chair Prof. Carmen Bucovala)

EEIU Constanta Youth Group Report

AIDRom — The Ecumenical Association of the Churches from Romania, the World Council of Churches and Mare Nostrum has again opened dialogue between educational institutions, churches and ecological organizations for the purpose of promoting, understanding and using the concept of eco-ethics (ecological ethics) as part of the Romanian pre-university education. The program's target group includes religion teachers and members of ecological organizations interested in the field of environmental education.

From 14-16 October 2004 AIDRom organised a workshop focusing on 'Eco-ethics and Environmental Education'. The workshop took place in Mamaia Resort, where the religion teachers and ONG members were shown the importance of promoting eco-ethics as an essential aspect and value of the appropriate attitude regarding the environment.

An important part of the sessions included the presentation of the Eco-ethics International Union, by the 'Map of Eco-ethics' and by the institutional structures implicated here.

The participants agreed to work towards establishing efficient teamwork between the members of the religious community and those of the scientific and educational sectors; otherwise, there is no hope for the real promotion of environmental education solely through the public.

Report, 11 February 2004 (from Chair Prof. Carmen Bucovala)

EEIU Constanta planning for 2004 focuses on:

1. Themes:
   • Evaluation of young people's attitudes towards environmental issues (using questionnaires)
   • Elaboration of educational games by high-school students for the benefit of their younger peers
2. Other targets: To increase the number of Constanta Youth group members (especially 9th graders)

Report, 01 April 2003 (from Chair Prof. Carmen Bucovala)

Changes in the natural environment as a consequence of human activity increase at both the local and global level. Only by raising awareness and making people understand the functioning of the life support systems and the relationship between the quality of the environment and the necessity of resource exploitation will a decrease in the man-made impact take place. The key to solving these problems is environmental education (EE), a relevant and necessary field for all ages and socio-economic levels. EE includes both formal education (traditional methods of teaching in schools and training institutions) and non-formal (clubs, associations, foundations, mass media, adult education institutions, and so on).

The creation of a new relation between individuals, society, and nature phenomenology is imperative in order to find a new alliance that will stop the probable eventuality of irreversible damage of the natural population level. Such methods are useful new knowledge forms that can enable individuals and social groups and also increase responsibility of social life at all levels (economic, political, productive, cultural, administrative, and so on).

From this perspective, not only the place of educators and of the new generation of trainers becomes obvious, but also the roll of all adults, in order to encourage students faced with a more responsible way of dealing with different dimensions of reality, to keep pupils from being overwhelmed and to continue working to diminish the effects of negative human behaviour on nature. As a civic activity, EE's goal is to develop individuals' knowledge and action, so they can observe, analyze and differentiate between the various aspects of nature and the social situation in which they are living, in order to understand their profound features.

Our environmental context (the urban structures, the totality of places which we are exploring and that are generating new emotional, social, and cultural relationships that are influencing the development of our own identity) puts us in contact with the multidimensional phenomenon of the micro and macro universe. Educators should know, in the first place, that they can make students broaden their perspective about the environmental process, and encourage them to decode and analyze complex events in a dynamic manner that characterizes the living and nonliving environment.

Our project aims to bring EE closer to teachers and students, to help them become more creative and to organize their own EE projects in their schools, through various trainings, support materials developed by NGO Mare Nostrum and Peace Corps volunteers, field visits and Earth Day activities.

Currently, EE in Romania is very limited, comprising a few motivated teachers who are willing to offer ecology as part of the optional hour and a few extracurricular activities organized by local environmental NGOs. There are very few resources available in Romanian to teachers interested in EE. There is an abundance of resources in English, but these require adaptation to the cultural and economic situation here, in addition to translation. Some of the cultural beliefs and societal attitudes that impede EE in Romania include:

• A general apathy that things are not going to improve and that an individual cannot make a difference
• An externalization of responsibility, the idea that someone else is at fault
• A rejection of things associated with communism (such as recycling and reusing) and a love for consumption

A locally adapted environmental curriculum that includes updated, interactive and dynamic teaching methods is needed to improve and further educate a new generation of Romanian children. Children are the future and need to receive an education different than Romanian adults received under communism. They need to see and experience why ecological health matters and how they are related to it. They need to learn that they can make a difference. This approach is directly opposite the traditional feeling embodied in the often-heard statement 'there is nothing we can do.' This project aims to build on already translated materials (projects undertaken by PCV's in Resita, Cluj and Sinaia) and to develop lesson plans and teaching methods adapted to the local culture and surroundings (Black Sea, Danube Delta and Danube) with the assumption that this will increase environmental interest since individuals will be able to relate more personally to the material.

Constanta, the second largest city in Romania, is situated on the Black Sea Coast. As of November 2001, Constanta had approximately 340 000 habitants, of which 175 104 (52%) were women. The city had 30 schools, including elementary, junior high and high school, totalling approximately 50 500 students (15% of the population).

Mare Nostrum, located in Constanta and founded in the summer of 1994, is an association of specialists addressing the continuous degradation of Black Sea marine and coastal ecosystems. Most members are specialists in different domains such as marine research and environmental protection; however, they recognize that the capacity of science alone to solve severe ecological imbalances is limited.

ABOUT MARE NOSTRUM

Mission
Mare Nostrum is an organization comprising citizens concerned about severe degradation of the Romanian Coastal Environment. Its mission is to promote transformation from current unsustainable practices and attitudes towards more sustainable and environmentally conscious methods regarding utilization of the Romanian Coastal Zone, in order to preserve and prevent the further degradation of habitats, species, and social/cultural elements within the region. In order to achieve its mission, Mare Nostrum is focusing on environmental education, public awareness campaigns, advocacy and lobbying.

Strategic Directions
1) Organizational Development
2) Service Delivery (Coastal Zone Management)
3) Lobbying and Advocacy
4) Networking (locally, nationally, and regionally)

Under communism nothing that fit under the subject heading of 'environmental education' existed. Many of the activities such as recycling, litter clean-ups or conservation and reuse (considered environmental activities in the US) were forced or done out of necessity under the communist regime. Students had to bring a set amount of kilograms of paper or metal to school each month. Bags, bottles and jars were used due to a lack of disposable products. As a result, with the change over to capitalism, consumerism has been embraced by the average Romanian and conservation efforts, such as environmental educators are now trying to teach, were thrown out with Ceausescu.

Littering is widespread, factories, cars, and trucks are major pollutants, and people don't understand why they should care about nature when the economic situation is so difficult. Teachers are personally interested, but with scattered information, even the most motivated don't have resources to teach. Most ecological activity with children is outdoors and takes place in summer months, such as in camps. A solid, educational ecology curriculum has not made it into the schools. Many school children have never had a course relating to the environment. Environmental progress is a national priority in eventual membership in the European Union.

1. The long-term goal is to improve the quality of formal and non-formal environmental education in the schools of Constanta County.
2. Short-term objectives include the following:

• Collecting existing materials and developing new supporting material for EE with a theoretical approach (the place of EE in the schools' curricula), and new teaching methods to be used with examples of lesson plans adapted for several types of ecosystems/biomes, like the Black Sea coastal area, the Danube Delta, the mountains, and the Danube
• Printing 200 manuals that will include approximately 200 pages of lesson plans, environmental games and colored atlases/maps. Eighty of the copies will be distributed free of charge to workshop participants and 20 will be housed in the Mare Nostrum/CIER library for future use by the community
• Organize two workshops/trainings (a 5-day theoretical workshop in March 2003, with about 80 participants, and a 4-day hands-on training in April 2003, with 60 participants). The first 80 participants will include 30 teachers from schools in Constanta, Eforie S, Navodari, 30 students from 'Ovidius' University (third year biology, ecology, geography, and graduate students), and 20 principals from schools in Constanta County. For the second workshop we will invite the same teachers and the university students
• The training will be developed in cooperation with the ISJ (County Schools Inspectorate) and CCD (Casa Corpului Didactic) in order to provide students and teachers an official diploma that can be used as a qualification certificate.
• Conduct a follow-up activity in which trainees will show the effectiveness of the methods that were suggested (teachers that took part will implement the methods in their classes/schools for at least 100 students each, to collect conclusions and provide a proposal for the CDS (school decision curricula) in the frame of EE, and to suggest an activity for Earth Day 2003 that can be developed by the school, with the help of NGO Mare Nostrum and PCV's

These activities will be developed using and building upon the previous experience of CIER (Centrul de Informare, Educare si Resurse pentru Marea Neagra, a sub-department of Mare Nostrum), in providing support materials and EE training for teachers. In 2000, CIER published and distributed, free of charge, the following materials: a) an Environmental Education Guide, b) Atlas of the Romanian Shore and c) a booklet on marine environment (conceptual diagrams). These materials were re-published in 2001 with other resources such as an atlas of protected areas in Constanta County, a booklet with conceptual diagrams on general ecology and educational games for primary school pupils.

This page was last updated on 25 October 2004.