Our project aims primarily at promoting awareness, appreciation and a more sustainable use of Soil. One aims at ensuring that generations to come will treat this precious source with care and respect. One intends to achieve this in the light of the fact that more than 805 million people in the world (UN statistics) are facing hunger and malnutrition. To accomplish this, one will provide the students with hands-on experiences on organic farms, where they meet the professionals in the field and they can discuss various matters, learn from his/her expertise and make an attempt to grow their own crops. Moreover, European agriculture has unfortunately reached a critical moment in history – the few operators still working in the field are aging. Young people are also facing a crisis due to massive numbers of unemployment. Bringing the two together seems to be both strategic and inevitable. This project aims to help bridge that gap by shedding light on agriculture and hopefully encouraging the younger generation to broaden their views and take agriculture into consideration when looking for an employment. In addition, one aims at providing the participants with the necessary tools to be able to shop wisely, thus becoming conscious and responsible consumers. All stakeholders will learn to make wise choices when buying certain products by reading the labels. One would become aware of how what we consume effects our environment and our health. This would lead to the second important topic which revolves around ways of how to lead a healthy lifestyle. This would give importance to physical activity and a well-balanced diet to reduce the risks of obesity and beat other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.For the project to be effective, one intends to put in place an array of activities that vary in nature to be able to reach around 1600 participants of different ages, academic and creative abilities. These will include cooking, painting, photography, farming, writing, a PowerPoint presentations, oral presentations and debates among others. As a result of these diverse approaches one would like to notice a change in the way the younger generation, most especially, perceives soil and learns how to make good use of it. In addition one would like the youth to become responsible consumers and more aware of what is essential to lead a healthy life. All main activities will be carried out in English to encourage the use of this international language. Moreover, all activities will be documented and uploaded on a Project Facebook Page to facilitate dissemination.
Our project - HEARTH (Health, Earth, Agriculture, Recipes and Technology at Heart) was not given life inadvertently. On the contrary, as one is becoming more and more aware of the risk of extinction of Soil, it was decided to put up a project revolving around this valuable natural resource. The idea was to raise awareness on the extreme importance of preservation and protection of Soil, since what might be perceived by some as mere dirt, is in reality at the heart of life. Thus, our main objective was to encourage all participants to learn more about soil: how it is formed; the different types of soil in one's country; realise how all the things that allow us to survive come from soil; measures that are already in place to protect soil from eroding and other measures to maintain a healthy soil. This allowed us to delve deeper into the subject and look into Organic Farming. This lead to the second main objective of the project, which was developed during the second year - Healthy Eating / Healthy Lifestyle. HEARTH brought together six schools in total: two from Italy (Novi Ligure and Savona); and one in Bulgaria (Burgas), Slovakia (Tvrdosin), Poland (Warsaw) and Malta (Mselliet). Their profiles vary between elementary / secondary / high school, private / state schools, schools that provide general education and others that specialise in the teaching of Romance languages to Vocational schools. Nevertheless the age of the target groups that took part in the main activities varied between 13 - 17 years. The participants from all six organisations, had the opportunity to take part in several activities that varied a lot in nature. The idea was to try and include students of different ages, abilities and interests. The main activities included: the setting up of a school garden where students made an attempt at growing their own organic crops; photography; Christmas Cards (hand-made or digitally-created) were sent, on which students made use of the English language to introduce themselves; Skype sessions to encourage the oral use of the language; campaigning for which one recurred to different tools such as painting, poetry, writing slogans, creating posters (manually or digitally); educational outings that permitted students to have hands-on experiences in contact with soil; sports activities that highlighted the importance of including sport as part of the daily routine; meeting with a doctor, fitness trainer and nutritionist in order to understand the health risks of an unbalanced diet among others. Objectively speaking, one truly believes that incredible results have been attained from the above mentioned activities. These include: a photographic exhibition that portrayed soil in the different countries; a Teachers' Resource Book for which groups of teachers from the different schools presented lesson plans that included innovative teaching strategies; a Recipe Book with a difference - the idea behind it was to be creative in the kitchen and come up with dishes made from 0 km ingredients to avoid waste and to be more ecological by reducing the use of plastic used for imported products and finally short video clips of students presenting very easy yet healthy snacks. The impact was undoubtedly noticeable. As the project progressed, so did the participants' interest in the activities and in the idea behind the activities. This was observed especially as a Learning/Teaching/Training Activity approached. Students were always eager to know when they were taking place, what they needed to do to take part and be chosen. In addition, as participants experienced organic farming and spoke directly with the farmer they could see that farming could barely be considered a nonintellectual job and that there are very valid reasons why organic food is more expensive than non-organic. Impact was noticed also thanks to the Photographic Exhibition and the Campaign. Participants remained in awe as they admired the beauty of Soil in the pictures where beforehand they might have perceived it as brown dust. Students' messages in their different forms, for the campaign where both strong and impressive which meant that finally soil had entered their heart. One hopes that lessons learnt in this project will be just the beginning and that participants will help pass on the message: There is no life without soil!