Children from all over the country submitted messages and cards that reached the electronic mailboxes of the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature, which were sent to the Prime Minister’s Office
“The planet is sending an SOS”, “We must take action now”. These are some of the messages they sent 4,000 children to the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on the occasion of the start of COP28. Thousands of students from all over Greece joined their voices expressing their concerns and concerns about the environment and the climate crisis.
Children from all the administrative regions of the country submitted messages and cards that reached the electronic mailboxes of the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature, which were sent to the Prime Minister’s Office.
In view of this very important global meeting, the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature invited all the student audience that participates in its educational networks to convey, with their own original speech, the needs, appeals, but also their optimistic message about the environment , climate change and nature protection, to the Prime Minister of Greece, who is participating in COP28, which is taking place in the United Arab Emirates.
“I tell my dad to write them because I’m still young and I don’t know how to write. I want you, when you meet with the other prime ministers, to tell them: “We must now take measures so that the places of Christos’ grandfather (Alexandroupoli) do not burn again and that there is not much heat and little rain so that his olive trees bear fruit and produce oil ”” read the card of little Christos from the 32nd kindergarten of Thessaloniki. With the images of the burnt lands etched in his memory, the only 5-year-old Christos, when he was asked to write a card, immediately thought of his grandfather’s place, Alexandroupolis, which was affected by this year’s devastating fire in the wider area. As reported by the Athens-Macedonian News Agency, the kindergarten teacher of the 32nd kindergarten in Thessaloniki, Lina Kynigopoulou, the children seeing the images of the disasters that have hit the country recently, such as the fires but also the floods in Thessaly, they realize that something is wrong.
“They feel that things should not be like this but always in a context where they can manage it psychologically and not be terrified. We don’t want to create despair and panic in children, but they notice the changes. But we take care within the context that they can face it and manage it and with the optimistic note that we can change them, act and act to prevent it, talk about it”, explains Ms. .Kynigopoulos, while adding that the kindergarten in general is a good place to start the cultivation of ecological consciousness.
“Our kindergarten belongs to “Eco Schools” and this year we are preparing a European eTwinning project with an ecological theme. I believe that the kindergarten, with the contribution of the parents, can plant the seed of ecological consciousness in the children”, emphasizes Mrs. Kynigopoulou.
At the Armeniou Primary School in Larissa, the number of students has dwindled after the catastrophic floods in Thessaly, as 29 of the 42 students are now left. In the class of the teacher, Marina Gudzourela, there are now only two children who also wanted to send their message in the context of Cop28.
“As you know Thessaly was flooded, my village is Armenian. It was a beautiful and green village. It had a beautiful square, a beautiful school and a beautiful playground. Now there is mud everywhere and our shoes keep getting ruined. We can’t play. The roads have been destroyed. And the whole village is the same”, reads the card of 8-year-old Emmelia Kouteris from Armenio Larissa.
As the primary education teacher, Marina Gudzourela, explains to APE-MPE, when they started school in October, they discussed the devastating floods in Thessaly and asked the children the question: “who is to blame”.
“So we wondered if only certain agencies are to blame or if the rest of us are also to blame. Then we started talking about climate change, even though it is a difficult concept for 8-year-old students to understand. This is how we came to the conclusion that man, with his behavior and the way he deals with the environment, also bears his own responsibilities. On the occasion of the children’s rights that we celebrated a few days ago, one of the rights that was mentioned was freedom of expression, that is, our right to speak our mind publicly, so we worked on that to get our voice somewhere official. And so we worked to do something for both our present and our future. That’s why we also decided to write a letter to the prime minister”, Ms. Gudzourela notes to APE-MPE and adds: “Our school does not have crowded classes. 13 students dropped out. Their houses were destroyed, some are hosted in structures, others with familiar persons, others have been transferred to different areas, We were supposed to be 42 and now there are 29”. According to Mrs. Gudzourela, at first her students were a little hesitant but in the process they did it with joy.
“We fight every day and especially in the psychological part. The children have lost friends and classmates and are looking for them. When the sky gets cloudy they start to get scared, and at the first crumb they worry. We see it in their eyes. But we try to make them forget as long as they are in the school environment”, emphasizes Ms. Gudzourela.
It is noted that the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature is the operator in Greece of the three international Environmental Education Networks “Ecological Schools”, “Learn about Forests” and “Young Journalists for the Environment”, whose founder and international coordinator is the International Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE). All three Networks are approved by the Ministry of Education and Religion.
As the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature points out, one of the key issues discussed at COP28 is the global Greening Education Partnership (GEP) promoted by UNESCO, under the guidance of the UN Secretary General, for the transformation of education systems and the integration of climate education. UNESCO is expected to announce the criteria and specifications for achieving the goals of the four Pillars of the GEP.
FEE is a strategic partner of UNESCO for the implementation of the GEP. Although our country has not signed the Partnership, the EEPP already participates in the Partnership and aspires to play a decisive role in achieving its goals, which they believe should be a central national goal.
The goal of the global Greening Education Partnership (GEP) is to adapt education systems to equip citizens of all ages with the knowledge, skills, values ​​and attitudes that will enable them to understand the complexities of climate change. crisis, the interconnection of global sustainability challenges, but also the ways of contributing to solving problems in a daily context.
Source: Skai
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