Leave No Trace Ireland are delighted to partner again this year with Waterways Ireland to deliver their exciting River Explorers Programme to a selection of schools funded under LA21 by local County Councils.
The ‘River Explorers’ project, is designed to engage local primary and secondary school students to take pride in their local river, lake or canal. The learning objectives include raising awareness and educating the children on the environmental impacts within their local waterways and how they can minimise these impacts and take action to keep their local waterway clean. In essence, they are being taught to “Use their waterway responsibly”.
Through outdoor and hands-on learning, skills training, resource development and raising public awareness, the programme is offering exciting and innovative learning approaches. Creating positive memories, healthy lifestyles, and physical wellbeing as well as paving the way for creating opportunities for caring for our natural heritage are all integral facets of a project that has sustainability at its core. This project empowers students to connect with their natural environment and enjoy their natural heritage responsibly and ethically.
Each participating school group will take part in classroom-based sessions in the morning followed by outdoor sessions in the afternoon at their local waterway. Both sessions are packed with interactive and hands-on activities which certainly keep students enthralled! The idea in the morning session is to impart the knowledge and skills the participants need to understand how to identify the wealth of biodiversity on the local rivers and canals, be able to anticipate how their use of these waterways impacts on this and the measures they can take to minimise this impact.
The afternoon session is about putting the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom into practice. Students will have the opportunity to discover the vast array of wildlife that calls the inland waterways their home! Each group will learn how to identify some of the plants and trees along canal and river banks and even come face to face with some minibeasts living in these ecosystems.
Leave No Trace Ireland and Waterways Ireland are delighted to partner in the delivery of what promises to be an excellent ongoing Education Programme
For inquiries, please email: training@leavenotraceireland.org
