As part of this month’s CoDesRes updates we hear from WP2 Youth Transition Lead Lucy Hunt from Waterville, founder of Sea Synergy Marine Awareness & Activity Centre. Lucy holds a Masters degree in Marine Environmental Protection and therefore no better lady than our home-grown Marine Biologist to tell you about the SDG 14 module she is leading and delivering through the CoDesRes project in Colaiste na Sceilge's Transition year.
CoDesRes SDG14 Ocean Literacy module
The Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14) is all about Life Below Water and the module that I’m working on with the CoDesRes team involves working with all the transition year students in Colaiste na Sceilge for six weeks to help them become more ocean literate. This basically means understanding how important the ocean is in our everyday lives, our influence on the ocean and the oceans influence on us.
So far the students have learnt how inextricably interconnected we are with the ocean from the air we breathe, food we eat, water we drink and much more. The classes involve individual and group work and we bring the classes outside as much as we can to the outdoor classroom. Mannix Point will be visited on a few occasions and is a great asset to have this shoreline so close to the school for learning experiences.
We believe that bringing the classroom outside and learning in the outdoors is a great way to learn, reconnect with nature, appreciate our landscape and of course get some fresh air - also the students really like being outdoors, so it’s a win-win! Also after every class we ask the students for their feedback so we can build a great module for the CoDesRes toolkit that other communities can use in the future. In this way the module is also contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) Quality Education.
Using the permaCultural resilience (pCr) methodology (McKeown, 2015) with the transition year students we are able to map the connections between land and sea and human and sea interfaces also recognising the importance of the Blue Economy for Iveragh. The classes look at learning from nature through bio mimicry and design challenges, ocean health and possible solutions to the challenges of plastic pollution in the ocean.
This module will give the students a foundation in ocean literacy, a connection with our local marine heritage and wildlife, which is a very important part of learning if we are to live in harmony with our blue planet and is so often overlooked.
"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught." (Baba Dioum, 1968.)
The module will be completed in Jan 2019 and not only contributes to our education resources and toolkit but gives the students a solid foundation for our Local Work Experience opportunity for Transition Years in February 2019; the Design Challenge which will look at how to use marine plastic waste and nets in product design, prototyping and 3D printing with engineers, marine biologists, artists and sustainability experts!
References:
Dioum, B. (1968) paper presented at the triennial meeting of the General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), New Dehli
Mckeown, A (2015) Cultivating permaCultural resilience; towards a critical praxis for creative placemaking