Education as a priority activity of Parks


A further contribution to the success of the new role as a local cultural institution that the school is going to play is given by projects that aim at integrating the activities of schools of the Park with the schools outside the Park and that the Park can facilitate and coordinate. The organization of twinnings between the classes, the collaboration in common projects, the joint programming of the teachers in the park with their colleagues of the visiting schools allow a very useful exchange of experiences. Due to these activities, the schools inside and outside the parks become mutual didactic "resources" able to mutually guarantee a strong added value to the didactic activity and allow an exchange of experiences, information, points of view, etc. In this way, the Park’s school becomes a "privileged witness" for urban schools as they represent a reference point towards various social and environmental contexts that are able to break the traditional isolation of rural schools.
Since the WWF is strongly and widely rooted in the schools of large urban areas (7,000 primary and low secondary school classes are members of the WWF’s Panda Club), it can collaborate with the Park Authorities in designing and managing joint programs between schools inside and outside the Park.

 

Boys during a fase of project "Licheni"

Organization of the
educational offer:
the network activities
It is even too clear that the small size structures of the park authority do not allow it to play alone and effectively all the roles that we are describing. Therefore, it is essential that the Park Authority plays exclusively or mostly the role of calalyst of the park’s cultural offer with the function to facilitate the network activities of the schools, associations, Local Authorities, decentralized ministerial structures (School Superintendencies, Local Health Units, etc.), social private sector (cooperatives) and of the economical and professional contexts. Therefore, the park also appears as an articulation and joint between what is inside and outside the park as well as a protection structure.
The WWF can collaborate with the park in mapping the cultural offer of the area and in structuring an integrated educational offer. The training context can also become an object of collaboration between the Park and the WWF that can design and manage, with competency, qualified training activities for the education personnel working in the Park Authorities.

The Environmental
Experience Centers and
the Local Laboratories

The Ministry of the Environment defined two different types of local structures for environmental education:

  • the local laboratories are usually managed by Local Authorities (sometimes in collaboration with the associations or the schools) and gathered in a national network (LABNET). They play the role of a point of information, contact and facilitation between the active local stakeholders in the field of environmental education. The Park itself could be – in collaboration with the regional authorities – the promoter and manager of a Park’s Local Laboratory, gathering in it the above-mentioned functions of facilitation and documentation points.
  • The Environmental Experience Centers appear as service structures (hospitality, green weeks, training courses, etc.) usually managed by associations, enhancing their experience and specific culture. The number and type of these structures must be carefully considered, for they have to be sustainable from the economical and managerial point of view.

At present, the WWF-Italy manages a large national network of Environmental Education Centers and laboratories and puts its own managerial experience to the Parks’ as well as the possibility to include new structures in a coordinated national network, involving, training and motivating the local operators available.

Visitor Centers, Faunal Areas
and Botanical Gardens

These structures may represent not only an excellent cultural and didactic tool for the visitors of the Park, but also the possibility to create a cultural growth and integration for the schools of the Park and for the local associations. Therefore, instead of asking external technicians to design and create these structures, it is certainly better to involve the local community in their creation. In this way, the visitors may see not the stereotype of that area, but a living and deep picture, made of very significant cultural contributions: a common work talking about the traditions, nature and the soul of that region.

 

A green future
Education as a priority activity of Parks (2 of 2) Education as a priority activity of  parks