Contents

• Objective
• Examples
• Rationale
• Framework
• Links

• Biodiversity Topics
  • Forest
  • Urban
  • Garden
  • Water
    • Project - Biodiversity in the Coastal Environment
    • Project - Biodiversity in the Fresh Water Environment

  • Renewable Energy

• Regional Facilitators
  • South-east Asia
  • North America
• Role of National Branches
• Certification
• Timeframe
• Project Coordinator

Examples: your school garden, a green space in the city, your local beach, a river watershed.
A more detailed explanation of seeds of biodiversity will issue soon from Isabel Abrams (aqua847.aol.com), the founder of the project idea.

What do I gain by associating with Caretakers of the Environment... is it more than an annual conference? This project proposal may be one more step in the right direction.

Rationale:

• to broaden the Caretakers network;
• to establish a profile to aid fund raising for the annual conference;
• to encourage links with existing networks;
• to work locally and think globally;
• students taking ownership of the project and their actions;
• to maintain the flexibilty of each school to carry out its own preferred project;
• to include those schools which do not have access to the internet;
• to utilise Information technology as far as it is feasible for communication;
• to include social and cultural aspects of biodiversity;
• to recognise all the elements outlined in the Rio convention: conservation; equitable distribution ; sustainable use.

Framework:

1. raise the awareness through a field visit, survey, audit which will help establish the baseline of study.
2. frame the question
3. Designing a plan requires an understanding of the process (input from local authorities, government agencies,etc) and requires collection of data or information.
4. Formulate an Action plan using the partnership approach
5. Carry out the action plan using service learning (integrating community service into the school curriculum and applying to real needs...for more information, please contact Wayne Schimpff)
6. Presentation of recommendations to next conference at a workshop or in report format if not able to attend.
7. Certification of work carried out.

Biodiversity topics

Urban
Co-ordinator: Fatima Matos Almeida from Aspea, Portugal
e-mail is nop30514@mail.telepac.pt
Fax is 35113011774

Garden
Co-ordinator: Maria Moate from the Department of Environmental affairs and tourism in South Africa
e-mail is opv_mm@ozone.pwv.gov.za
Fax is 27123226287

Water
Co-ordinators are:

1. Dr Hagit Mairon of the Israel Oceanography Institute for marine projects
   e-mail is hagit@ocean.org.il
   Fax is 97248511911

2. Assa Baumer of Midreshet Sde-Boker in Israel for fresh water projects. e-mail is assab@environment.negev.k12.il

Renewable Energy
Co-ordinator: Wolfgang Potratz from Bad Essen in Germany
e-mail is potratz@p5.gbessen.nsn.ni.schule.de
Fax is 4954722279

In addition there are number of regional facilitators:

South east Asia:
Suryo Prawiroatmodjo of the Indonesian Environmental Education Centre
E-mail is pplh@sby.centrin.net.id pplhbali@denpasar.wasantara.net.id
Fax is 62343880884

North America
Wayne and Scott Schimpff of von Steuben Metropolitan Science Centre
e-mail is scott54@rocketmail.com
Fax is 17735345210

More regional facilitators to be identified by the end of the summer.
Their role could be to

1. facilitate non-internet schools to find partners within industry, other internet linked school
2. to deal with problems of language

Role of National branches
to get schools involved and co-ordinate fund raising and selection of schools for attending annual conference.

Certification
All schools who complete the criteria laid out may be certified whether they attend the annual conference or not.

TIMEFRAME
October 10th
Each school should submit:

1. their topic (see topic choice above)
2. a short report on their awareness exercise (step 1)
3. their initial question for enquiry (step 2)

January 20th
Each school should submit a short report of their activities in designing a plan (step 3) and an outline of their action plan (step 4)

June 1st
All schools should submit their final report outlining the action taken (step 5) and their recommendations (step 6)

All of the above should be submitted to the topic co-ordinator.
Schools that have difficulty in communication should contact their regional facilitator.

June 27th-July 3rd
Environment and Biodiversity conference in Costa Rica
http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/injudeso/caretakers/page3.html

Please write back and suggest links to other networks that you feel would mutually benefit from this project framework. We hope to have a full list in place by the end of August.

If you can suggest other topics which you would be happy to act as faciltator for, please let me know. e.g. air? grassland?

More details will be posted at the end of June when I have had my holiday and others have had a chance to contribute and make suggestions.

Project Co-ordinator: Andrew Cox from Newtown School, Ireland.
E-mail is Newtownw@iol.ie
Fax is 35351871928 or 35351841337