- The Environmental Education programme helps to raise environmental awareness among students, which leads to a better understanding of water resources and more sustainable behaviour.
- The actions are part of the ambitious ‘Canya a la canya’ plan, developed by the Consorci de la Ribera and Fundació Limne in 13 municipalities.
- The actions are supported by the Fundación Biodiversidad of the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico (MITECO) within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
31 May 2024.- The ‘Canya a la Canya’ project, coordinated by the Consorci de la Ribera and the Fundació Limne, reiterates its commitment to environmental education as one of the pillars for raising awareness of the aquatic environment and its ecosystem, making society aware of the problems threatening the Xúquer, such as the presence of invasive species or climate change, and providing keys and mechanisms for its conservation and improvement.
With the aim of strengthening training in environmental issues, the ‘Canya a la Canya’ team presented an Environmental Education Toolkit at the beginning of the school year, the guidelines of which have been implemented during this semester.
The aim of the guide was to provide teachers with reference materials on how to integrate river-related topics and concepts into formal and informal education systems. Under the umbrella of this guide and the educational workshops offered by the Canya a la Canya project, schools in La Ribera have developed several proposals addressing issues such as climate change, drought, flood risks, biodiversity, solid waste and ecosystem restoration, among others.
In addition, the workshop proposals encouraged students to leave the classroom and visit the natural environments of the municipalities where the campaign is being implemented, so that they could acquire practical knowledge and environmental awareness about protecting our environment, both in terms of water resources and the environment itself, as well as the history and culture that connects us to the Xúquer.
Presentation of results
Over the past week, two meetings were held (one focused on primary education and the other on secondary education), at which teachers from the twenty-eight participating schools presented their proposals and results through oral presentations and posters, which were then voted on by the attendees themselves and by the project’s technical team, with the aim of rewarding the most innovative educational experiences.
‘In this first edition of the campaign, we have given a positive assessment to the most cross-curricular proposals’, says Sales Tomàs, director of the Limne Foundation, ‘highlighting those schools that have managed to involve a wider range of subjects in their educational proposal on the Xúquer’.
On behalf of the Consorci de la Ribera, Paqui Momparler Orta and Óscar Navarro Torres emphasise that ‘rivers cross different landscapes and cultures, which is why we believe that environmental education must imitate them and consolidate these cross-cutting projects as an element of educational transformation’.
This educational proposal from the ‘Canya a la canya’ project benefits from a call for grants, promoted by the Fundación Biodiversidad of the Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico (MITECO)), for the restoration of river ecosystems and the reduction of flood risk in urban environments, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR) financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
