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MOBILE CAMPUS STP - Fall cycle

Mobile Campus

Author:

Green Steps

Short summary:

The Mobile Campus in the city of Sankt Pölten started its fall cycle on September 23th. Outdoor education is an opportunity to turn daily actions into sound habits, which instilled at an early age create lasting harmony between human and non-human nature.

At the end of August we left our outdoor headquarter in Sonnenpark and we moved back to our office. We did it enriched by three months of constant outdoor experience. Organizing a summer camp focused on environmental learning teached us how much children can engage with nature if you adopt the right approach. We participated to two Festivals in cooperation with Tangente STP and LAMES-Sonnenpark: this allowed us get in contact with the cultural and associative life of the city.

The Fall Equinox was an occasion for presenting our pilot project and our fall programme, once again, in Sonnenpark. The cooperation with the local schools will be a key-factor for our activities in the upcoming months. Broadening our memberships and reinforce our bounds with the associative landscape of Sankt Poelten is one of the most crucial challenge of this season. We will offer our BFG walks every Tuesday and Thursday: this will allow us to explore once again the diverse urban and suburban landscape of Sankt Poelten.

Our routes will take us along more than 300 old tress which we lovingly call Big Friendly Giants into urban parks and different countryside settings – the diversity of landscapes is certainly one of Sankt Poelten’s main and underappreciated attractions. Participants will be able to collect observed species in a printed bioregion passport, which we have designed for this pilot project as well as on their digital account. 

Why do we need a Mobile Campus?

So far, Nature has been used far too little as a resource for creating a common basis for people from different social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The mainstream discussion is so focused on biodiversity loss and climate change that we are overlooking the opportunities that environmental education offers as a vehicle for social inclusion. In a world with more and more people and less and less space, we are challenged to develop individual empathy for nature and responsibility for common goods. Where we come from - socially and culturally - or what beliefs we hold are small questions compared to where we are going. The future of humanity is a common one and we must learn that we are all in the same boat.

We will explore more than 20 routes which have been developed during the past 18 months. The individual routes are summarized under the umbrella term "Mobile Campus". Mobile Campus stands for outdoor learning in various locations that can be easily reached on foot, by bike or public transport. The Mobile Campus switches indoor education to an outdoor setting and thereby creates the very condition required to drive environmental awareness. During our daily walks we observe and discuss the impact of climate change. Our daily records in our nature journals document our observations and create a focus on how we interact with the natural world. 

The activities aim primarily at children in early and late childhood and are facilitated in a Nature Guide - participant ratio of 1: 6. Smaller children can take part in Plants & Friends events on request or with a lower nature guide – participants ratio. Big Friendly Giant routes are suitable for children older than 12 years and adults of all ages, but we try to keep a 1:6 ratio to provide best possible sharing of knowledge on local flora and fauna. We strongly encourage interested people older than 15, in particular elementary and lower secondary teachers, to train with us as Nature Guide and lead the routes for other participants and their own students.

Our team is deliberately international and interdisciplinary. While we all love nature, we do also have a bunch of technology enthusiasts. Our Nature Guides – partly experienced, partly in training – often have a background in natural sciences. We are all certified first responders and attach great importance to detailed preparation of our events in order to avoid dangers and risks.
Gloria Corradini is a biologist and leads the pilot project Mobile Campus STP.  Yos Hamza qualifies as an environmental educator at Green Steps during his European Voluntary Year. Merlin Mayer studies biology at the University of Vienna and contributes to the team with his journalistic and photographic passion. Lukas Helebrandt supports our work as technical director and mastermind of our learning platform. Valentin Pivert adds aesthetics and glamour to our appearance as our team’s lead designer. Giuseppe DeStefano organizes our international communication on social media and our website. Sonia Jiang is our newest addition to our tech team and contributes as full-stack software developer.