TRAINING COURSES ON “TAKING GREEN EDUCATION INTO SCHOOL” AND “ DOCUMENTATION, INFORMATION MANAGEMENT & OUTREACH”

The training programmes, Taking Green Education into Schools: Lessons, practices in India helping participants explore ways and strategies to improving and make more relevant environment education in school curricula in Vietnam. The training programme, Documentation, information management & outreach, is a capacity-building programme aimed at strengthening the information management, outreach and advocacy capacities of the participants. Both these participatory programmes will stimulate the exchange of ideas and provide a platform to share best practices and concrete practices on important environment and development-related issues

PURPOSES OF THE 2 COURSES

 These training programmes are aimed at capacity building in environmental education as well as strengthening the information management and advocacy capacities of the participants form various Vietnamese local organisation

  ITINERARY

 During these courses, the participants have the opportunity to understand India’s environmental protection, use of natural resources, laws and roles of the government and also visit the social and culture place

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) was started in 1980 by a group of engineers, scientists, journalists and environmentalists to catalyse the growth of public awareness on vital issues in science, technology, environment and development.

Today, Centre for Science and Environment is considered one of India’s leading environmental NGOs specialising in sustainable natural resource management. Its strategy of knowledge-based activism has won it wide respect and admiration for its quality of campaigns, research and publications. CSE promotes solutions for India’s numerous environmental threats – of ‘ecological poverty’ and extensive land degradation on one hand, and rapidly growing toxic degradation of uncontrolled industrialisation and economic growth on the other.

 CSE’s core values of respect for science; equity for all; respect for nature’s diversity; respect for traditional knowledge; public participation; and environmental sustainability, have inspired citizens and communities to take action and find sustainable solutions. CSE’s role is to help India create a sustainable society even in the worst of circumstances, marked by poverty, illiteracy, inequality, and population growth.

 CSE’s organisational culture is built around an information-knowledge-wisdom chain that helps make people aware of the emerging problems and helps in building constituencies. CSE identifies solutions (intellectual leadership) and then pushes for change through lobbying with politicians and bureaucrats. CSE’s educational and training programmes are knowledge investments that seek to build capacities of managers and future leaders.

The Centre’s efforts are built around five broad activities:

–         Communication for Awareness

–         Research and Advocacy

–         Education and Training

–         Documentation

–         Pollution Monitoring

 Lesson learned from the 2 couses and Some ideas about the further activities will be apply in  Vietnam

Over the 2 courses of five days, we would be discussing how can be made more interesting and practical inside Viet Nam These training programme would equip us to use and execute some of these lessons into VietNam with the technical transfer from CSE as follows:

 For Green Schoosl Programme

 CONTEXT

The 21^st century has opened with a great challenge for the World’s people, inviting all stakeholders, leaders and individuals to consider how they can change their current patterns and structures to achieve a sustainable World situation. How can this be done? Sustainable Development, as a term and a theory, aims to promote a mode of development in which economies, societies and culture, and the environment are considered as entities of one sphere, where they do not conflict, but rather support and sustain each other.

Clearly, this kind of development cannot be done by market mechanisms alone, nor can it be achieved by technological development alone. Sustainable development will rely heavily on the responsible actions of individuals. All individuals rely on the environment for their basic life needs, a collection of individuals creates a society and individuals drive economies. To act responsibly, an individual first needs to be aware, have knowledge an understanding of the world around them, and have the skills to act on their knowledge. Environmental education as a way to spread awareness and enhance knowledge. Hence, environmental education is an effective tool for us to achieve the goal of sustainable development.

Basically, all individuals need to learn environment, improve awareness and knowledge in environmental protection. They are objects of environmental education. However, the young is one of the most important objects of environmental education than others. The reason why is they, themselves are the next generation of decision makers and natural resources users and managers. Therefore, the more well-trained young generation, the more developing their country will be.

Be aware of the vital role of environmental education as well as the young to the development of country, in 2001, the government of Vietnam had promulgated the Decision 1363/QĐ-TTg, to insert the environmental education into the national education system. Regarding the implementation of the Decision, there were a lot of building capacity activities for teachers and especially awareness raising program relevant to environmental sciences for children had been taken place. These programs all have mainstreamed into the time of other subjects like geography, biology, extra-curricular … and so on. They more or less had effects on the pupils but unfortunately their behaviors seem no changes. No actions from their mind had been taken to protect the environment.

 Knowing about the success Green School Program executed by CSE in India, SEF have conduct a short course in CSE for number of officers working in environmental education field with a clear objective that these attendees will apply taught knowledge in Vietnam to improve current status of environmental education in the country.

The 5 days course was really well-organized and useful. We, attendees of the course gained a lot of knowledge and experience. Below are some background information, results of the course we summarized and the last and important section is our recommendations and draft plan for applying Indian GSP in Vietnam.

 GSP INFORMATION

 The course had been conducted by CSE- a public interest organization, began in 1982. They research into, lobby for, and communicate the urgency of sustainable development.

CSE started the GSP with a simple idea. They know that environmental challenges are growing, and the challenges will need each one of them to get involved. It will need them to change the way we manage natural resources; alter our consumption patterns so that they can do more with less; and innovate with current technologies so that we can improve the environment around them.

They think about a program then, would help them learn. And not just the idea but the practice of making change work. It is this simple idea they converted into the GSP. They began upon survey and compiling a manual. The manual provided the tasks for schools to begin the rating of their performance. The remarkable point of the program is consider pupils as a manager and the pupil must do themselves the audit work under the direction of teachers. That means they act.

Over the last two years, the idea has gathered momentum. More and more schools across India are using the manual to be a part of this learning exercise. They have learnt that what they know is not enough to protect the environment and what they preach is often not easy to practice. But they also learnt the rationale of what they should do that will make a difference in the world.

Basically, all content of the GSP had been effectively transferred to us in 5 days through presentations, films, interactive talk with teachers and pupils…  We believe that we are able to do not exactly the same things but the same way in Vietnam, transfer what we were learnt into action in Vietnam.

FINDINGS

GSP is a self-assessment program. It helps schools audit their use of resources and map their consumption and wastage. The exercise involves collection of information under the following heads:

Water, which builds an understanding of water use, on the sources of water, on the ways of water conservation (rainwater harvesting and water recycling), the importance of sanitation facilities, with the ultimate aim of building a water literate and prudent society.

Air, which helps schools understand how their transport policies affect air quality and to find ways of reducing their emissions so that a citizen’s right to clean air is protected.

Land, which focuses on the land-use of schools to map green areas, to identify biodiversity; and to grasp the enormous ecological and economic value of this resource.

Energy audits the sources of energy, the consumption of energy; and explores ways, in which this resource can be saved, to minimize pollution and costs.

Waste, helps in finding out the total amount of waste that is generated, and offers ways and means to reduce it by segregation, recycling and reuse.

Although, each of them has particular features in its audit plan but they all have common essential steps listed below:

·        Set up audit team in school (around 10-15 people including teacher, pupil, administrator)

·        The audit team start collecting information relevant to the use, management, and effect level of environmental factors in school

·        Handle information by formula in the manual of CSE

·        Upload handled information into the website of school (under the website of CSE)

·        CSE visits schools to check and verify the information; concurrently, they assess the changes of attitude as well as the ability of teachers and pupils in natural resources management, protection and use towards sustainable way. 

Then CSE will choose 20 high mark schools to give awards. The process will continue in the sequent years.

Basically, the audit program (all factors) would be conducted one time per month in average. The results that they come up with is not only help them to assess and rank green schools, but also help schools get experience to improve the next time audit.

Regarding the scale and object of program, it is known that the program is the model project in school with taking part of pupils, teachers and other officers in school.

As mentioned above, audit of all factors have the common steps, nevertheless each factor has their particular traits that producers need to notice when running the program. Another important thing is that all of figures mentioned in the manual (e.g. indicators, weight age…) are not fixed numbers. They would be changed to suit with different natural conditions, different places and regions.

RECOMMENDATIONS

 This training course was extremely helpful to bring valuable experience not only in environmental education, but also the culture and social aspects in India for us. The interactive methods and visual materials (presentations, films…) were used during the course helping us easily absorb majority of knowledge. In additional, the diverse age range and the mix of male and female governmental and NGO officer worked extremely well in terms of promoting the ability to share experiences and ideas.

Vietnam and India have number of same features and the need of environmental education improving in Vietnam is really essential, so applying GSP in the country is satisfactory and necessary project. It is expected that the project would be received the encouragement as well as fund from the Sweden Embassy in order to delivering and contributing the natural protection issues in Vietnam.

On the last day of the course, we had a discussion in term of how to apply GSP in Vietnam, when and where we can do that. Results of discussion was synthesized to make a draft an objectives, scale and road map of our project, properly named “Green action in SchoolS Programme”

 For Documentation, information management & outreach

 A training programme on library, information management, documentation and web-based outreach

Knowledge is the key to social change. However, information not organised properly defeats the purpose of any communication or knowledge-based initiative. Managing information, in the internet era with explosive information availability demands special skills and calls for investments in strengthening the information infrastructure and skills of an organisation.  There is a need for understanding tools and technologies for information identification, organization, analysis, presentation, dissemination and monitoring.  

This unique course will teach participants on how to manage all aspects and types of information, at an institutional level and develop an online resource centre using open source tools and technologies. The programme is broad in scope, and covers a gamut of information types, management strategies, tools, and dissemination strategies.

The programme  would focus on  issues concerning transition to a virtual information resource centre. It would focus on issues related to integration of information technologies in libraries, information and documentation centres, with focus on IT infrastructure planning, IT training needs and content development etc.

 Achieving the results & Prospective plans

This five-day training programme offers a unique opportunity for participants to learn from an experienced and skilled staff, as also to learn and share  experiences with other organisations. As  it is expected that after attending the programme, we are able to:

–          Appreciate the role information plays in strengthening the organisation functioning and output.

–          Understand the issues involved in information centre development and automation.

–          Develop a plan for managing a digital information centre

–          Establish efficient work practices for online information management

–          Manage news clippings, articles, reports, documents, photographs, films  and contact addresses.

–          Plan for creating information products/ services 

–          Develop strategies for web-based information outreach.

–          Plan for measuring and monitoring impact.

Based on the knowledge that we has learnt and the experiences of CSE, we are going to have some ideas. We hope that we can do it as well and contribute to our country.

1. Setting up The Environment Information Group.

After finishing the training, the information management group decided to set up a group to share the knowledge during the past activities. Its name is “Environment Information Group”. The group is established from the members of the training, will be become “Environment Information Network” from individuals and organizations which are working in environment protection field in all the countries.

2. Setting up The Green Information .

In order to share the knowledge about the environment and every member can upload, search the information, our group decides to set up The Green Information Page. Besides that, we also use the email to exchange ideas and information.

3. Publishing the CD about environment pictures.

The Environment Information Group keeps many kinds of pictures about environment, about 500 pictures. Size of picture is 10 x 15cm, 300 px, with formatting jpg file. All of them are about the natural and environment of Vietnam. Our group intends to edit and publish a CD about this and it can be searched by the keywords based on the experiences of CSE.

The CD will have the following sections:

–         Natural and environment of Vietnam.

–         The symbol about environment of Vietnam.

–         Pictures of Picture contest about environment through years.

–         Pictures of Picture contest about pure air year 2007.

–         Pictures of June 5 and pictures about “The making a cleaner world campaign” through years.

–         Pictures about the environment pollution .

4. Publishing the Green Information.

The advantage of our group is that we have journalists, reporters and environment officers. The  Green Information will be published every two month (based on the experience of Green file). The Green Information will be update on medial reportage on issues concerning environment and development.  and provide a unique and convenient way of getting a background on the important issues, and an insight into the emerging trends. Our group have just been established, so we just use the existing resources. Next time, we will collect the information about environment in Vietnam and all over the world to edit into the monthly collection.

The monthly collection intends to have 8 – 12 pages, size A4 with the formatting pdf file. It will be edited, designed by the members of the group. After finishing, it will be posted onto the website www. sef.org.vn and sent to necessary addresses through emails.

After the first time doing the monthly collection, if it is interesting, it will be upgraded by increasing more pages and maybe published in term of  paper and issued outspread.

Conclusion and Suggestion FROM THE 2 TRAINING COURSES

1. Conclusion:

–         Although the English language of group is not equally, but everyone in the group tried very hard and helped each other while studying. Especially, CSE gave 2 interpreters for 2 groups, so that we could acquire knowledge and used it in concrete situations.

–         Although the Indian food was not familiar with us, but the organization board had already prepared the Vietnamese food carefully, so everyone were healthy during and after the training. 

–         The experiences of CSE about the Information management that we learnt can applied to Vietnam, according to each organization of each student trainee.

–         The training achieved a complete successful with the assistance of CSE, the considerate preparation of the Organization, all the member in our group were healthy, happy and very impressed this training and we hope attending the next trainings.

2. Suggestion

–         The training which is funded by Sida, especially NGO organizations, is very useful. We have learnt a lot from the training and can use it in concrete situations in our organizations.

–         In the enable condition, we propose Sida to continue assisting all or a part of expenditure for the short or medium training, which is about the different problems in order to improve the capacity of individuals and NGO organizations in Vietnam.

–         Combining the programmes, The project should organize the trainings in Vietnam which will be lectured by the professionals in and out country.

Assisting a part of expenditure for the environment information group to execute some of the missions that we have set up.