Human caused climate change is related with the fossil fuels and CO2 gas emissions. Both in the world and in our country, the climate crisis threatens the living life. In recent years, due to forest fires thousands of trees have been destroyed in Turkey, while floods caused deaths and drought adversely affected agriculture and livestock.
At the same time, biodiversity is also decreasing. Especially, agricultural biodiversity decreases in relation with the monoculture imposition of industrial agriculture. This also interrupts the process of healthy food production and access to healthy food. With the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, water, soil, plant, animal and human health are harmed significantly, and the future of children and young people is destroyed by adults.
The project "Mitigating the Effects of Climate Change with Children-MECCC and Intergenerational Transfer", which we submitted under the direction of our association in the previous call period, is continuing and we are observing its promising results as we foresee. Our project was started with the aim of enabling our children, who live in concrete cities that are stuck between four walls, and whose movement and creativity are limited, to be more self-confident, creative, at peace with themselves and nature, inclined to teamwork, and sensitive to nature. The project was created with the main objective of enabling children and the related society to establish a relationship between climate change and daily living habits, empowering children against the climate crisis, and creating and disseminating examples for adaptation to climate change.
For the outputs of the MECCC project, which started in May 2022, to be more permanent and sustainable, and to be disseminated, the children participating in the activities in the field during the project should continue their practices more consciously, both at school and at home. With the motivation we got from MECCC it has become a duty for us -as the project team- to make our work with Çankaya municipality more widespread and leave a cultural mark. This will be possible with the climate-nature literacy trainings, ecological awareness trainings for children and their educators, and nature-based education practices and practical application areas for preschool children. Trainers from different professions, who are teaching children in Çankaya Municipality Nureries, will first be subjected to a professional development program within the scope of the project and become EcoGuides. Successful candidates who became EcoGuides within the scope of the MEECC Project will ensure the sustainability of the project by participating in the new EcoGuide trainings as trainers and assistant trainers.
Within the scope of the Ç?DEA Project, agricultural application areas like those made in MoniBostan will be built in 11 Nurseries of Çankaya Municipality, as well as the construction of a Bee-Insect hotel and bird nests, and the activities held in MoniBostan will be transferred to schools, and these activities will be included in the education program. Thus, the implementation of a sustainable education model will be implemented for both the 4- and 5-year-olds, who cannot benefit from the MECCC project, and the nearly 1500 children who come with new registration every year.
With our project, the nature-friendly curriculum created within the scope of the MECCC project will meet with approximately 400 children who have the chance to participate in the project, as well as approximately 1500 children in Çankaya Municipality Nurseries. With the trainings of the trainers of the children, the students who are renewed every year will be able to benefit from the nature-friendly trainings in the long term. On this occasion, 11 nurseries affiliated to Çankaya Municipality, which will be transformed into nature-friendly alternative education centers, will primarily emerge as an exemplary model for the kindergartens of other institutions in Ankara.