LOESS (Literacy Boost Through an Operational Educational Ecosystem of Societal Actors on Soil Health) 

 

Project number: 101112707

Project name: Literacy boost through an Operational Educational Ecosystem of Societal actors on Soil health

Project acronym: LOESS

Call: HORIZON-MISS-2022-SOIL-01

Topic: HORIZON-MISS-2022-SOIL-01-07

Type of action: HORIZON-RIA

Service: REA/B/02

Project start date: 31 May 2023

Project duration: 36 months

Project coordinator: Wissenschaftsladen Bonn e. V. (WILA Bonn), Germany

Project Web site: https://loess-project.eu/ 

 

The Horizon Europe project LOESS: ‘Literacy boost through an Operational Educational Ecosystem of Societal actors on Soil health’ officially started in June 2023. Under the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, twenty partner organizations will be joining efforts during three years to map, co-create, and test methodologies and tools in fifteen countries across Europe.

 

The Kick-off meeting of LOESS was held between 12th and 13th July in Bonn, Germany with the hosting of WILABonn. It started with the discussion of ‘The LOESS vision and mission: A common understanding & the LOESS objectives and continued with the Introduction by Maria José Amaral, Research Project Manager, REA “Expectations from the LOESS project”. After reviewing the project management (WP-1) led by WILABonn, each work package (WP2->WP7) was dealt with in detail by the help of leaders.  Thanks to the guest speaker’s (Prof. Willi Xylander, Senckenberg) contribution for “Increasing awareness for soil biodiversity and protection – The international touring exhibition ‘The Thin Skin of the Earth’”. 

The final goal of the LOESS project is to raise awareness on the importance of soil and its functions and to increase soil literacy across Europe. For this purpose, the consortium will be working to map and connect multiple actors and provide an overview of the current level of soil education related offers; to identify educational needs on soil health literacy; and to co-create and pilot a variety of courses, modules and learning tools. Such tools and methodologies will be distributed by campaigning and promoting hands-on activities related to soil education through Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL). All in all, LOESS will boost soil literacy by building an educational ecosystem that enhances capacity building, knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning amongst the addressed target groups.

Partners involved

The LOESS project will involve twenty institutions under the coordination of WILA Bonn:

Wissenschaftsladen Bonn e. V. (WILA Bonn), Germany – Project coordinator

European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium

Vetenskap & Allmänhet (VA), Sweden

University of Innsbruck (UIBK), Austria

University of Sassari (UNISS), Italy

Justinmind SL (JIM), Spain

Technological University Dublin (TUD), Ireland

 University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava (UCM), Slovakia

Wageningen University (WU), Netherlands

Center for Promotion of Science (CPN), Serbia

Social Innovation Institute (SII), Lithuania

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (AMU), Poland

Controvento Società Cooperativa Sociale (ControV), Italy

Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), Spain

ANS Education and Consultancy Ltd (ANS), Türkiye

University of Brescia (UNIBS), Italy

University of Vechta (UoV), Germany

APOPSI Information and Communication Technology, Consulting and Training Services S.A. (APOPSI), Greece

The Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB), Northern Ireland

Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB), Hungary