Educating on "Climate Forests" Good practice example

Climate change is a global problem caused by several factors. Among them, deforestation and forest degradation generate 20% of total greenhouse gases emissions, responsible for climate change. For this reason, the Forestry sector plays an important role in the fight against this phenomenon. This is especially significant in the case of the European Union, whose consumption of wood and wood products is one of the highest in the world.Currently, activities focusing on Environmental Education address climate change and forest benefits in a separate way. As a result, society is hindered to understand the important role of forest in climate change. This project idea was born to meet this need.The «Educating on “Climate Forests”» project has counted with the participation of 5 different partners consisting of NGOs and higher education institutions that work with young people from environmental fields or with concerns on current environmental problems. These partner organizations are E-zavod (Slovenia), EURO (Italy), University of Usak (Turkey), Hnutí DUHA - Friends of the Earth (Czech Republic) and, as a coordinating organization, IROKO DFS (Spain).The overall objective of this project has been to broaden the approach of non-formal education to address climate change from the relevance that forests have in its mitigation.To do this, a group of youth workers from the non-formal education field has elaborated environmental education activities merging forests and climate change topics.Once training activities were developed, they were tested in local workshops with groups of at least 10 youngsters (18-30 years old). After these local workshops, results were shared and the best activities were selected to include them in a toolkit containing a) a guidebook with the 50 best activities (available in 6 languages), b) a guidebook annex with other 25 activities designed under the framework of this project and c) a handbook with a list of good practices to reduce the pressure we put on forests. The direct beneficiaries of this project have been the youth workers involved into the project and the participant youngsters in the local workshops.The main expected benefits have included: a) Firstly, for youth workers: to enhance their skills on planning and developing of environmental non-formal education workshops; to create new links and contacts that may generate in future collaborations.b) Secondly, for participant youngsters: to have the opportunity to participate in an active way in the process of evaluation and improvement of the training activities created by the project; to develop a stronger awareness on the relevance that forests have in fighting climate change; to increase their possibilities to get a job as an environmental educator. c) And last, for NGOs, youth organizations and other related entities applying the training material created by this project: to improve their results in design and implementation of environmental non formal education programs, address to sensitize youngsters about the role of forests in fighting climate change.