Summer camp for greener cities by MINTiKi
Pitch
Children, holidays, camps, meadows, insects, bees, city climate, cycling, education, balconies, flower acceptance
Description
Summary
Best way to achieve a big and lasting impact is, to educate children, because when they grown up, they will have this knowledge and worldview always in their mind:
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in their career
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their daily routine and
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in the way how they educate their children
So we want to organize summer camps for children in the age of 6-10. There we want to do courses together with other institutions about insects (bees, bumblebees, pollinators), birds, small animals and plants in the city. How they life, why we need them, how to protect them (more public transportation, cycling, less often cut the lawn, more plants at the balconies and plant concept for them, architecture concepts, city concepts - e.g. how plans change temperature in cities) and at last some weeks later a good planned and well prepared public presentation by the children about what they learned - in front of their class or in front of business associations, landlords, tenant associations, etc - wherever they would like to present it
Is this proposal for a practice or a project?
Not sure
What actions do you propose?
- Courses (information and explanations about the topic itself*, explanation about status and social rules which hinder rational action - *insects (bees, bumblebees, pollinators), birds, small animals and plants in the city, how they life, why we need them, how to protect them (more public transportation, cycling, less often cut the lawn, more plants at the balconies and plant concept for them, architecture concepts, city concepts - e.g. how plans change temperature in cities))
- Visiting other institutions ( city planning center, beekeeper, chairs of the university )
- Gardening (concepts for balconies, small green areas, courtyard care - 'wilder' gardens and no English lawn)
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Crafts (for the gardening concepts, personal sense of achievement, to support understanding and to reminders to the children of this project)
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Presentations (children learn to explain their knowledge and solidify their knowledge and inspire other children, adults will listen to the children and have to justify themselves)
Who will take these actions?
children, MINTiKi (a non-profit association), beekeeper, parents, professors, business representatives, representatives of the city
Where will these actions be taken?
We will organize it in Germany in Dresden, but it can be done wherever someone or you are interested to to it.
In addition, specify the country or countries where these actions will be taken.
Germany
Country 2
No country selected
Country 3
No country selected
Country 4
No country selected
Country 5
No country selected
Impact/Benefits
What impact will these actions have on greenhouse gas emissions and/or adapting to climate change?
It will change the mind of children and adults about nature, how a decent cityscape looks like and maybe about status symbols like cars. And when the children are grown up and are themselves engineers, politicians, and entrepreneurs, they themselves will think more about nature's concerns and take them into account.
What are other key benefits?
Costs/Challenges
What are the proposal’s projected costs?
The costs depend on the scaling of the project. One course for one week plus presentation ( Preparation, materials, labor costs, rent of the presentation rooms, admission, etc. ) for about 5-6 children will cost estimated about 2000€. So for all summerholiday we could have 6 courses and it will be round about 12000€.
Timeline
Short impact are just more plants at balkonies and some more flowers in the city. But the medium-term is, that there is greater awareness of people to take care of our nature in theire freetime and in their job projects and in political decision
About the author(s)
MINTiKi, "MINT" interested kids, is a non-profit association and includes the encouragement of STEM (German = MINT)-gifted children.
MINT = Mathematics + Informatics + Natural science + Technics STEM = Science + Technology + Engineering + Mathematics
MINTiKi offers regular courses and projects for gifted and intrested children.
Related Proposals
References
We organized a similar project in a research center in the past about diffrent apes. The children realized independently that their rank order (it was a school class), which also exists in mapegroups, was probably due to the fact that some project groups ran better than others.
In our courses the kids realized by themselves (it was about the intelligence of some animal species) that the conditions of posture must be terribly boring for animals and that it is very unfair by humans to treat them like this.
By:
MINTiKi
