About Vamos Environmental Education Centre

The Vamos Environmental Education Centre is the only centre of Environmental Education in the Chania Prefecture in the west of Crete, in the Municipality of Apokoronas.

This school year has ten educational programmes for students and teachers in which school groups can participate upon request (submitted to the Head of School Operations Directorate after the invitation by the Ministry of Education, Research and Religion). These programs are implemented either at the premises of the Environmental Education Center in Kefalas Apokoronou or field trips. (Old Town Chania, Agia and Kournas Lakes) or at school. We can also host 21 students and educators taking part in our programs in the Parthenagogio of Vamos, a traditional building restored and provided to us by the Municipality of Vamos.

Since the reopening of the Vamos Environmental Education Center in November 2011 until July 2015 it has participated in or organized educational programs, public awareness campaigns and seminars with 14,668 people taking part, of whom 3,611 were teachers and adults.

Every school year during one-day or two-day training sessions at the Vamos Environmental Education Center and action days, the programs involve hundreds of teachers and thousands of students from primary schools and secondary schools from all ovet Greece.

Furthermore, the Vamos Environmental Education Center coordinates the function of a Regional Network for Recycling, a Regional Network for the School Gardens  and a Regional Network for Climate Change.

It is worth noting that the our programs involve teachers and students from across the country, so the operation of the Center not only contributes to environmental awareness, but also to achievements such as the function of pioneer recycling programs and ecotourism in conjunction with the National Park of the Samaria Gorge and many efforts in the area of Apokoronas.

In Apokoronas our actions include cleaning beaches, Days of Action for Reusing and Reducing garbage (involving 87 schools, 2,108 students and 151 teachers in 2016), seminars for teachers and citizens, production of educational materials for use by schools, Educational and informative Seminars others.

The Center also participates in Erasmus KA1 programmes every year,relating to subjects such as Climate Change, Outdoor Education, Refugees, Migrants and Underprivilleged People/Minorities, Nature, Culture and Civilisation, Innovative Methods of Teaching and many more.

Moreover,we have created educational material in collaboration with 6 organisations from Portugal,Poland,England,Croatia and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Key Action 201 Programme.The first one called Greenopolis,is an  interactive e-book for kindergarden students that has to do with Sustainable Development.The second one called Colourful World,is a computer learning game for children 6-10 and everyone who is interested in  Sustainable Development Education.

All the above actions are financed mostly through European programs from the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs.

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