Nature based education for adult learners communities

<< Background >>The project had three partners that already worked well together in communication online. We were three different organisations that have learned a lot from each other in reaching the same goal product - a community garden for everyone to use in our local communities. We believe our divercities has made the project stronger and helped us reach a larger audience. The partners were new in the Erasmus+ program, and a small scale project like this gave us a good start in learning about the opportunities in the program. We hope that in the future we will be able to join in more projects and/or help others to get the same opportunities that are possible in Erasmus+. We felt that the sharing economy concept was perfect for this kind of initiative, and the focus has demonstrated that people are interested in environmental and sustainable projects. To support it, events, educational materials, and more have been made available during the time of the project.<< Objectives >>First of all, it was the physical garden for nature based education that was the main goal. Our goal has been to build a community with a physical place. This place has a sense of belonging and sharing and is interconnected with other communities internationally. We know how libraries work, sharing and reusing, and by moving this thinking to a shared garden with herbs and cale has been perceived as a new and interesting beginning of green innovation. Also making this an inclusive and educational place both mentally and physically. Empowering people through capacity building and being able to offer higher quality education. We wanted the project to be green and sustainable. In terms of the educational program, the process and the partners and the community members also helped us to create the program, based on our good practices. Knowledge and inspiration from the study visits, sharing of our ideas gave us the opportunity to learn from each other and create a program based on these inputs. Building this nature based educational community also gave us the knowledge to be able to be part of bigger projects after this.<< Implementation >>Project management and communication of the project are necessary to achieve its goals and anticipated effects. Partners organised, set up, carried out, monitored, and more.Starting with a kick-off meeting and study visits to Slovakia. The details of the project partnership were reviewed, milestones were established and more.Nature based educational program was made for educators and trainers who work with adult learners and community members was developed using a nature-based approach.Project meeting, study visits & workshops with local communities in Norway & Iceland. All organisations sent their representatives to these meetings.In Iceland, Norway, and Slovakia, there were also national workshops and community initiatives. It included field trips, workshops, presentations, and community knowledge sharing with educators and organisations.The Nature Based Education online conference was held via Zoom. At the conference we discussed community work and education, good practices and challenges, & actual experiences with community development and education.Collection of Good Practices and Challenges includes project's best practices as well as obstacles that all partners and target audiences can use in the post-project phase.<< Results >>The quality of the project outputs was secured by joint development process, joint reviewing, peer review (in case of the educational program) and also by the target community feedback (educators, adult learners, and community members).Website - a website that contains all the parts of the project and contains also a manual for making a community garden. It has pictures and blogs from the process and is the place for the collection of good and bad practices from the gardens and the project.Community gardens in all three countries - a physical garden for nature based education. To learn how to be more self-sufficient.Nature based Educational program we created and tested a new educational program for adult learners in local communities, and built capacities of educators in using this program within their educational work with this target group.Online conference - was meant for sharing the project results, experiences, lessons learned, presenting good practice examples from all the three countries, and networking.