Environmental Education

Environmental Education for adults

Environmental Education for ARCHELON is the process of value-appreciation and concept-definition, in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary for the understanding and evaluation of the interrelation between man, civilization and biophysical environment. It demands practical occupation with decision-making and with the formation of a behavior-code on matters concerning the environmental quality; of course, Environmental Education is not only children-designated but it extends its scope to include adults as well.

In 2005 ARCHELON with the support of the General Secretariat for Youth established the Volunteer Training and Information Centre for the Environmental Protection, an institution with material status and specific goals and targets.

The programme's goals are to:

• Contribute to the formation and development of a new adult-mentality and behavior concerning the voluntarism and the participation in actions for the environmental protection and the ecological social development in general.
• Fully inform citizens on the protection of the natural environment through the use of original and actual methods, in order to enhance their environmental awareness.
• Systematize and actualize the volunteer education through the application of new technologies and integral means, in order to approach the public-target.
• Promote the principles of voluntarism and bring about their adoption and internalization through the indication of specific fields and action-possibilities.
• Provide easy access for students to a broad range of information concerning the environment, the sea-turtles and the coastal ecosystems as well as the ability to do practice and research work.
  

Its targets are:

• To provide and organize a sequence of seminars for likely volunteers for the environment by presenting the multiple chances for participation and activation.
• To inform and promote ecological principles and values.
• To encourage the voluntary participation in environmental programmes.
• To support and reinforce the participants by cultivating the feeling of active participation and personal responsibility.
• To have a positive influence on the beliefs of the participants (and other target groups such as the public opinion, the local and public authorities and the mass media) concerning the environment and the Non-governmental Environmental Organizations.
• To create and educate environmental voluntary teams while acquainting them with the use of advanced technology systems.

Part of ARCHELON's programme on Environmental Education and Information is the mobile exhibition. It is an exhibitive system carried in a van (donated by FORD), which can be developed in both external and internal places with three electrically illuminated aluminium exposition hives. It presents briefly and comprehensively information about the wealth and history of the Mediterranean, the traditional fishing ways -among others- as well as the biology and the life of the sea-turtle.