Last Sunday during the fair of the annual festivities in Nanegal we had a test run of our park school activity.
The park school is an extension of our forest school concept. Where the forest school is technically located in the reserve, the park school is more mobile and can be run anywhere where there's a little nature around.
The Santa Lucía reserve because of its remoteness can be difficult to access for students of the regional school, so over the last years we have not been very effective with this type of education. It also requires resources of the students and interest of the local schools and their staff to get to the reserve and be exposed to nature for a day. Both seem to be scarce these days.
The park school solves this problem as it can be located at a spot that is frequented by students and the population in general. The plan is to establish ourselves in Nanegal's central park every month or two and offer education, fun and practice on several topics concerning science, the environment and conservation. This can be extended to healthy life style, philosophy and other interesting areas.
For the fair last weekend we planned four topics:
(1) the world of the tiny
(2) mammals and camera traps
(3) the cloud forest
(4) the world of thoughts
But because of the constant stream of people interested in the microscope and the terrarium on our stand at the fair, there wasn't much room and time for the other topics. Lesson learnt.
The park school program will naturally be much more structured, more diverse, but with a more limited number of particpants.
The immense interest in the microscopy and the camera traps last weekend makes us optimistic that our new education concept will be a success and can contribute positively to creating awareness for and interest in nature and conservations amongst the population.