“Children for biodiversity”: raising awareness among children about protecting local biodiversity

The “Children for biodiversity” contest and the Maisons du Monde Foundation share the conviction that finding out about their environment is a way for children to gain better insights into nature, and learn to protect it. So in autumn 2019, we quite naturally decided to follow our event “Aux Arbres les Enfants” event up by backing this contest organised by Milan Presse.

The contest is run as follows: primary schoolchildren from all over France set out to investigate biodiversity in the vicinity of their schools. With the help of their teachers, pupils had to write a  report on a plant or animal species and produce a poster to raise awareness of the need to protect biodiversity. While all participating classes fulfilled these requirements, three stood out and were duly rewarded by the jury!

At the  Cigognes school in Saubusse, children worked on protecting house martins, which nest under the village bridges.

The very comprehensive, long-term project involved classes counting the nests and birds every year.

Find out more here!

The second project was also the Foundation’s favourite.

With the help of the French society for the protection of birds, schoolchildren from Sainte-Elisabeth school in Paris highlighted the importance of urban biodiversity with a survey on house sparrows and their extinction.

To address this issue, they set up a nesting box in the school playground.

Third prize went to schoolchildren from René Guy Cadou in Taupont.

After finding out about the larvae of spotted salamanders, a species threatened with extinction, in a river running through the village, the class decided to create an educational pond in their school.

Find out more about this initiative!