As the Erasmus+ funded project comes to its concluding months, in September Friends of the Earth Malta participated in the final transnational meeting of Blooming Schools hosted by Station Europe in Bucharest. The project aims to increase awareness and biodiversity especially in secondary schools by empowering young people to take action for nature.
Blooming Schools brings together educators and ecologists from Malta, Greece, Portugal and Romania and is led by BirdLife Malta in partnership with Friends of the Earth Malta, St Nicholas College Dingli Secondary, Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves (SPEA, BirdLife Portugal), Agrupamento de Escolas de Portela e Moscavide in Portugal, Hellenic Ornithological Society (HOS, BirdLife Greece) and Station Europe in Romania.
During our meeting we had a chance to review the work of the past 3 years and fine tune some outputs of the project as well as share experiences from participating schools in different countries. The project also promotes and applies STEAM subjects in students’ learning through project-based activities with supported teacher training and resources.
One of the main project outputs we worked on was the creation of a Wildlife Garden Manual for schools with step by step instructions on how to set it up from scratch – including a comprehensive list of over 70 Mediterranean pollinator plants for different seasons to ensure some diversity all year round. During the meeting we also discussed how best to share this information with schools and even adapt it to suit the needs of local communities wishing to rewild their localities. For inspiration we also had the opportunity to head to the nearest and largest green lung in Bucharest just 5km away from the centre – Văcărești Natural Park – where we could see how nature restoration can bring back wildlife even to the most unexpected places – in this case a water storage area which had been abandoned for years. We had the chance to spot some local flora and butterflies and do some birdwatching in the wetland which has formed.
If you would like to have more information about the project and would like to eventually receive an online copy of the Wildlife Garden Manual you can email annalise@foemalta.org or even better, join us at our upcoming community garden event on the 20th of October as part of the Ġenna Ġonna celebration of gardens. The first participants to register and attend will be given a freshly printed version of the flowery manual! Check it out on www.foemalta.org/events.
