Assuring the access to nature education and nature experience for impaired people Erasmus Project

Project Title

Assuring the access to nature education and nature experience for impaired people

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Nature experience for impaired people and tourism for all is an important topic in the EU. Destinations like national parks, nature reserves and other locations for nature experience begin to implement such offers. Hence, guidance for such destinations is missing to judge on the prerequisites onsite and to enable decision makers to start with implementing relevant installations and alterations. A good catalogue of nature education activities for environmental educationists is still missing. The German Association of Blind and Visually Impaired People has invented guidelines for nature trails and other purposes. Partners from environmental education organisations in Germany, Poland, Hungary and Spain active in European lake regions in this project also collected expertise in some aspects of that topic. Together, we want to incorporate these experiences in the Lakes without Limits project, broaden our own knowledge, and pass it to the others.

Lakes without Limits aims on working to improve adult education for nature experience by developing, testing and disseminating educational material to foster skills of environmental educationists with respect to disabled people. It will provide guidance for two questions:
1. How can environmental educationists improve their offer for guided nature experience with impaired people? These educationists can either be employed in a nature conservation centre, or freelancer or volunteers.
2. How can nature trails be prepared and/or altered for the unaccompanied use of impaired people. The target group here are managers and environmental educationists responsible for such trails.
The material developed will enable its users setting of personal pedagogical goals and following the success thanks to correspondent checklists. The whole material will be available for the broad audience. Concrete examples for work with impaired people on nature conservation/experience will be produced: barrier free brochures, audio guides, 3D-Material, Sign- and Simple Language Films.
The focus will be on tourist destinations in participating countries Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Spain, as well as areas of special conservation interest.

With this, we want to bring forward the inclusion of disabled persons in the EU and foster the sensitivity to nature for all Europeans. We wish to generate momentum for nature experience for impaired people.

Project Website

http://nature-without-barriers.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 220703,66 Eur

Project Coordinator

GLOBAL NATURE FUND STIFTUNG & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Stowarzyszenie Ekologiczne “Etna”
• Umweltdachverband GmbH
• Deutscher Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband e. V.
• Balatoni Integrációs és Fejlesztési Ügynökség Közhasznú Nonprofit Kft.