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About educational program Hiking with NATURA “Na túru s NATUROU“

Website snaturou2000.sk was created for school educational program Hiking with NATURA “Na túru s NATUROU“, which was designed for primary and secondary school students and teachers in Slovakia. Program focussed on learning more about the biodiversity of school ´s nature surroundings. The target groups were children from 6 to 18 years.

Within this program, children were documenting the occurrence and environment of 100 selected species of plants (Atlas of plants), 100 selected species of animals (Atlas of animals) as well as 17 selected species of invasive plants (Atlas of invasive species). To prove the evidence of the species, children had to take photographs or make audio/video recordings, which were displayed on the Internet in the Gallery of found species. Children´s experiences and observations were published in the program newsletter.

The program Hiking with NATURA was inspired by a very successful biodiversity mapping project called Living nature “Živá príroda” (2001 - 2003). For its implementation, Slovakia gained two international recognitions – the silver award – The Green Apple Awards 2003 from Green Organisation (November 2003) and the certificate - The World Award for Sustainability 2004 from Energy Globe (April 2005).

The methodology of the school program Hiking with NATURA was created by the Slovak Environment Agency (SEA), which also ensured its implementation and the running of the website. The role of SEA is to increase public environmental awareness through a comprehensive offer of informal environmental education programs at a national and regional level. It provides practical, methodical, publishing, design and conceptual activity in this area. It organizes training and information events, collaborates with interested sectors (The SR Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport), institutions and NGOs in Slovakia and abroad. It carries out tasks in terms of Environmental education concept, the National Sustainable Development Strategy and the UNECE Strategy for education for sustainable development.

The school program Hiking with NATURA “Na túru s NATUROU“ was run from 2009 to 2019.

Overall balance/statistics of the school program:

  • 1 257 explorers (children and teachers),
  • 230 integrated exploration groups,
  • 327 mapped areas in Slovakia,
  • 2 359 records of animal and plant occurrence (Gallery of found species).

The program was implemented within the project Improving environmental awareness in the field of nature and landscape protection development (including NATURA 2000) and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

Running of the school program and updating of the website have been completed since June 2020.
Website snaturou2000.sk is still running for educational and documentation reasons.

 

Content administrator and technical operator

Slovak Environment Agency

Tajovského 28
975 90 Banská Bystrica
+421 48 4374 197
www.sazp.sk
E-mail: info@snaturou2000

Website creation date: September 1, 2009
Last update: June 30, 2020