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Environmental Education Coalition

Summary Report from the Minsk Assembly, 2001

Effective environmental education:

·        centres on learners' active participation

·        starts where people are, and looks for potential activity within each particular situation

·        includes direct experience of nature

·        provides opportunity for creative use of natural resources

·        is inter-disciplinary

·        supports personal initiatives and places them in a wider context

·        recognizes that humankind is part of nature, in dynamic inter-relationship with the whole Earth community

·        for Christians, witnesses to the loving purposes of God, creator, sustainer and redeemer, manifest in and through nature and history

·        leads to transformed human lives rather than to exploitation and abuse of nature

·        challenges the life-styles of the rich and provides positive models of living by the criteria of sufficiency, leading to a more enjoyable and fulfilling quality of life

·        listens to the experience of those who are on the underside of the dominant mode of 'development'

·        recognizes the links between economic structures, democratic participation and care for the environment

·        uses - and develops a critique of - mass media and the internet

We heard stories of..

·        programmes of ecological education (eco-paedia) involving a Christian input within official formal and non-formal education

·        summer schools for young people

·        the educative process by which a kindergarten was built to an eco-design, and involved parents in creating a garden of fruit trees, herbs, flowers, fish pond, rabbits ... The children share in worship services that celebrate Creation

·        inspiration through a church bright with plants, flower pictures and embroideries

·        ecological Rehabilitation, in particular horse riding for disabled children

·        study and action prompted by schemes for eco-awards both in churches and in schools

·        raising environmental awareness within programmes of religious education

·        education f6r sustainable development in state schools

·        establishment of an international, inter-disciplinary Masters degree programme on environmental issues

·        concern over the effects of tourism

·        motivating young people through using the internet (www. klimat.@u) but also the dangers of them becoming addicted to surfing and violent games

Ruth Conway, Coordinator.                                                                                                      May, 2001