Click on the links on the top to reach the available resources collected by INFORSE-Europe members !

"Energy &Climate School Resources" is a collection of educational and teaching material, experiements, games projects, programs. The resources are available in several languages e.g., English, Danish, French, Spanish, Hungarian etc. In general, each material is described in English, there is link to the resource, and there are contacts details if you are interested to try, use or translate the resource. The resources were collected in the framework of a project realised in cooperation with INFORSE-Europe members in the period of 2004-2010. Since 2010, some of the material have been added and updated. Unfortunately, some of the resources has been moved to new places or moved out from the internet. Specialy the web sites established by EU financed projects have expired. We made some update, but we have limited resources to follow up. We are working on to raising funds to make more update. Contributions to update are welcome. Please write email to ove@inforse.org.

The school education activities have been added to the INFORSE - Europe Work Program since 2004. These were realised because a number of NGOs are actively involved in sustainable-energy education at schools and colleges. Some of the activities particularly focused on sharing practical information including the use of models, mobile exhibition units, and IT-based energy-education materials. Participants research the most effective ways of engaging school pupils in various western European and CEE countries, as well as sharing experiences of cross-cultural barriers in the use of energy and climate change education resources.

Activities since 2010:

We added and updated some of the resources. We welcome contributions for updates. Please write email to ove@inforse.org.

Activities in 2008-2010:

• SPARE activities in many former CIS countries, and are increasing in more counties.
  In the last years there were also increased educational activities to school children in Portugal, Bulgaria and Romania.
• Educational materials have been regularly added to this school resource database.
  In 2010, six creative international school projects, supported by Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE), were added under Projects.

Activities in 2007:

In 2007, INFORSE-Europe extended its activities through:

• SPARE activities in many former CIS countries, and are increasing more countries.
  In 2007, INFORSE-Europe member organisations prepared to launch SPARE in Romania (Earth Friends) and Portugal (Almargem).
• SPARE activities in many former CIS countries. In 2007 it is also under introduction in Romania and Portugal.
• Climate Change Science for the NGOs and School Teachers
  Climate Change issues are presented widely in media these days and frequently the same messages (facts) are used by NGOs in their campaigns or school teachers in their teaching process. CC related campaigns or teaching are sometimes ending with a bit of frustration (another bad news issue) or reluctance how the public can stop the CC or influence the whole process. INFORSE member NGOs have the unique position here because their activities are primarily oriented on sustainable energy development and are offering the solutions to the threat of CC. What is really needed for NGOs and teachers is to get the scientific knowledge of CC in a relatively simple way which can be used as the support for argumentation towards sustainable energy development. This report is targeted at exactly this goal: providing the NGOs and teachers with the CC knowledge based on latest scientific data which can be helpful in their daily work. The content of this document is based on The IPCC 4th Assessment Report.
  Download report: (266 kB word doc)
• Seminar in Samsø, where there was a model building workshop in October 2007.
• Members made educational activities, which are publish in the Sustainable Energy News, and in the INFORSE-Europe school resource database.

Activities in 2006:

In 2006, INFORSE-Europe extended its activities through:

• SPARE activities, as well as its Seminar in St Petersburg
• ESEEF activities by participating on its Conference in Budapest in 2006.
• Seminar Solta, where different models were tried out from the resource database.

Activities in 2005:

In 2004-2005, the project was co-ordinated by the West Wales ECO Centre, which has 20 years’ experience of energy-related and environmental educational work with schools. The INFORSE-Europe secretariat has managed the web-based resources.

Web site
The INFORSE-Europe school resource web site was redesigned with new categories. Besides INFORSE members' activities, other valuable resources were added including English reviews of Spanish, French, and Hungarian materials.

Small Projects
During the second half of 2005, 4 worthy projects secured full or part funding to pursue their educational work from 4 countries:
· Romania: Building more practical models or demonstration kits for sustainable energy solutions from Prietenii Pamantului (Earth Friends), and 4 film scripts (solar cooker, wind, solar car,and dynamo).
· Greece: Climate change and sustainable energy solutions Publication from Mediterranean SOS Network.
· Poland: 2 films: Biomass and Small Hydro Power Plants from the Polish Ecological Club Upper Silesian Branch.
· Hungary: Translation and introduction of 25 practical 1-page descriptions of energy and climate experiments from E-misszio/EKA. (The original 45- page material was developed and used with success by the Danish School Forum and the Danish Organisation for Renewable Energy. 25 of them have been translated to English and 15 have been translated into Romanian.)

Meeting, Workshop and Conference

- In June 2005, INFORSE-Europe made an exhibition at the EU Green Week. The web site of the school resources including the review of Spanish material was a big success. The national Spanish television company did a report about it. See more on the INFORSE-Europe the exhibition here.

- In September 2005, at the INFORSE-Europe seminar in Romania Sharon Bannister delivered a presentation and organised a workshop. This meeting provided an ideal opportunity to talk through the issues NGOs face in trying to develop educational material, not least the lack of awareness of successful programmes. Bearing this in mind it would be very useful if all INFORSE members who have done or are doing work with schools could send a brief outline of their activities in their own language and English to sharon@ecocentre.org.uk, and/or ove@inforse.org for website inclusion. Please see proceedings of the Seminar here.

Activities of West Wales Eco Centre
Since the start of September 2004, the school activities of West Wales Eco Centre have worked with 2644 people from: 24 schools- primary (3-11) and secondary (11-18), 3 colleges. Sharon Bannister, the school officer of the West Wales Eco Centre, has presented climate change and sustainable energy solutions at 3 teacher training events as well as 3 child focused events. One such event was ‘Into the Future Festival’ organised by Carmarthenshire County Council on 30th June and 1st July 2005. The Centres’ mobile unit joined many other organisations that have sustainability of the Earth as a core activity, to work with classes of pupils from 15 schools.

During 2005, the Eco Centre celebrated its silver jubilee with a full week of events from 16th - 21st May 2005. As education has always had a high priority there was also a strong focus on activities for children with:
· A climate change poster competition - 2 individual children won solar powered caps and the winning school, Pembroke Dock Community School, received small solar panels for electricity investigations and some books.
· A bilingual display at a reconstructed Iron Age fort that examined energy use in relation to the past, present and future.
· A visit to a secondary school with the Eco Centre’s mobile exhibition unit. Hands on sessions with years 9 and 10 and busy lunch and break times proved to be very successful.
· Building alternative energy cars with the local primary school, Ysgol Bro Ingli. The winning team created a balloon-powered vehicle and everyone enjoyed chocolate crispy cakes made with solar cooker melted chocolate.

Pembrokeshire schools that are aiming for the county’s Sustainable Schools Award contact the West Wales Eco Centre when they want to examine their energy use.
The presentations and workshops are tailored to specific age groups however they always start with talking about climate change and using a picture with Danish illustrations to emphasise that no matter what language people speak the problem is universal. Once the problem has been identified solutions are sought; firstly the group examines energy efficiency, as this is within everyone’s capability and then they move onto to looking at alternative technologies. Wales has a number of wind farms and is often a subject up for debate, especially with older teenagers and adults. In the county there is one community wind turbine that classes can see to make up their own minds about harnessing power from the wind.
Documents have been created to support energy work for the Sustainable Schools Award Scheme and these are all on www.ecocentre.org.uk.

As well as this ongoing work, the Centre has been asked to support the Darwin Science Festival in a project where energy efficiency is to be promoted. A web quest was devised as the input involves pupils using the Information Technology bus from Pembrokeshire College to research and advertise their own energy efficiency messages. The target is to work with 40 schools!

In the long term, the Centre would like to deliver a comprehensive, interactive climate change project for schools that focuses on energy efficiency, alternative energy and global energy issues. This activity is still at the fund raising stage.

Activities in 2004:

Small Projects
Following previous co-operation on educational activities, INFORSE-Europe members (Earth Friends, Romania and West Wales ECO Centre) made a proposal to include sharing information, resources, and experience on sustainable-energy education. Small projects were prepared by INFORSE-Europe member organisations an these can be seen on the web site of the resources.

Web site
A new school education section on the INFORSE-Europe website was designed and created. On the site, there are educational resources and descriptions of climate- and energy-related projects and programs.

Meeting and Conference
Representatives from INFORSE-Europe member organisations participating met on September 20, 2004 in Copenhagen immediately before a European Sustainable Energy Education Conference (September 21-22), which the representatives also attended. Sharon Bannister from the West Wales ECO Centre delivered a presentation about the INFORSE-Europe activities. See more about the Conference here.

More information:
INFORSE-Europe Secretariat:
- Judit Szoleczky: ove@inforse.org

- A 2-page Brochure of the Work Plan in 2004. [page 1/2 185 kB] [page 2/2 252 kB8]
- 2004 Report of West Wales Eco-Centre [115 kB pdf file]

Drawing & Animation from www.webpinguin.de