USSE

Proyectos de cooperación en marcha

Project PAWS-MEDITERRANEAN

PAWS was a project developed in central Europe for the creation of a European approach to forest pedagogy. PAWS Med is now seeking to adapt the materials and approaches developed to the forests in Southern Europe. USSE is part of PAWS-Med, which has been financed by the EU within the Leonardo da Vinci fund.

The PAWS course concept is a combination of seminars and workshops, self-instruction (CD-ROM, workbook), together with the completion of training with possible scenarios for learning outdoors. Foresters are allowed to create their own concepts for guided tours through the forests for different groups (teenagers, elderly, people with special needs).

It is a unified concept of forestry education at European level, that will provide foresters with communication and educational skills that until now were not included in the curriculum. It was s successfully implemented in six countries in central and northern Europe, and in this project the contents will be adapted to fit the Mediterranean catchment area.

The objectives can be summarized as:

To ensure that the Mediterranean countries have a common understanding of forest education and a common base of training methods, activities and materials needed for the training of foresters
To ensure that institutions are able to organize and conduct courses
To establish good national coordinated networks with international framework considering both continental and Mediterranean problems
To Include in the curricula of forestry training centres the PAWS-Mediterranean

Seven members from six Mediterranean countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Slovenia and Cyprus) and three former members of the project have become associated to carry out this project. They will divide the workload amongst them, with USSE being mainly responsible for the diffusion and dissemination of project results.

PAWS-MED Tasks

1. Introduction of the concept PAWS

2. Translation of PAWS course material

3. Creation of the PAWS-Mediterranean Package

4. Refining PAWS materials

5. Dissemination of activities

6. Exploitation of results

7. Quality Management

8. Project Management

With the addition of the problems of Mediterranean countries such as forest fires, PAWS-Mediterranean becomes a closer product to the European action framework. In addition, it can be interesting to publicize these Mediterranean problems to other European countries