Proiecte

VOLUNTEERS IN DISADVANTAGED AREAS: TRAINING TO COMPETE (Acronym VUDA)

In disadvantaged areas show the need for training volunteers in a short time and quickly make it responsive to the demands of the territory itself. Our project aims to promote the mobility of volunteers and trainers for the exchange of different methods of approach to the problem, for the exchange of different methods of teaching and learning. In particular we would like to promote the activities of the older people who remain active in the disadvantaged areas and want to be useful in various forms of volunteerism.Politically and geographically disadvantaged areas in many social services dedicated to the person entrusted to volunteers. These volunteers often for lack of time are formed independently without any real ability to organize and comparison with the other parties involved in the service.
The new tools resulted from the Project will become part of the GEOCONCEPT   learning materials for  further education activities, especially in problems that GEOCONCEPT  is already involved (offering alternatives for people in disadvantaged area, in order to mitigate deforestation, keeping clean lakes, know better how to protect nature/environment and to face minning closure etc.).The new experiences shared in the project will be shared with the GEOCONCEPT  local partners and stakeholders and we will imagine new paths to improve education for our  learners. Also, the experiences in the project will help GEOCONCEPT  to draw new learning materials in order to offer better alternatives in sustainable development (SD) education for the target-groups. We have special focus on the population in defavourised area with huge problems about deforestation and poverty due to mining closure. Also, GEOCONCEPT  will share the good practices learned through the “Universities-Faculty of Geography” community (internet group with up to 2000 members).



Organizare Workshop: WHAT DOES CLIMATE CHANGE MEAN?

The Workshop addresses itself to young and adult people interested in the environment and climate change, with the purpose of improving current perception on climate change, showing that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon, which has affected rhythmically the evolution of Earth. Another purpose is to highlight the importance of certain environment elements (like lakes, caves, certain landscape features, etc.) which are genuine information archives for those interested in doing research in climate change. Hence the importance of preserving such environmental elements.
The idea of the workshop came as a result of a local analysis taken among students and young adults, which showed that the majority of them considered human activities as the main cause for climate change, together with a general confusion between climate change and global warming, both perceived as catastrophic events.
Climate change has been a global concern during the last decades, as more and more people acknowledge the impact of such changes on human life and activities. Contrary to the general public opinion of the triggering role of human-related activities on global warming and on climate change respectively, scientists state that our planet has made a rule of swinging between very cold periods – i.e. “the ice ages” and warmer, “interglacial” periods, approximately every 100.000 years. In other words, 120.000 years ago the climate was very warm, whereas 20.000 years ago it was extremely cold, but the 100.000 years interval between the two extremes had an oscillatory pattern with cold periods separated by warmer periods. These variations have been caused by factors such as different amounts of solar radiation received, deviations in the Earth’s orbit, continental drift and formation of mountains, changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, etc. Nevertheless, climate change is a rhythmical process, and its occurrence is normal and natural in the million years’ time evolution of our planet, but it is generally acknowledged that human-related activities have also had their contribution to accelerating global warming process during the last centuries.
Finding all the information related to climate evolution on our planet was possible as a result of analyzing records kept in the so-called natural archives, such as ice sheet, glaciers, caves, sediments deposited in old lakes, landforms created by the evolution and movement of glaciers, a.s.o. Each layer of ice in ice cores, of mud in lake sediment cores, or of calcite in cave stalagmites was formed in a particular period of time with specific climatic conditions, which enables researchers to find out what was going on thousands of years ago. These layers are similar in structure and function to tree rings in a tree, only that they can last much longer, storing information about past conditions related to temperature, humidity, vegetation cover, volcanic eruptions, floods or other events, on a wider chronological scale.