New Bilingual Science Books Enhance Marine Education in Caribbean Schools
Source: Caribbean Media Partners
| BONAIRE, (June 15, 2024) – Marine Conservation without Borders (MCB) and Stichting Nationale Parken Bonaire (STINAPA) have completed implementing their project “Novel Education Tools to Foster Local Ecosystem Sustainability Practices.” This 16-month initiative funded by a €337,562 grant from the European Union Resilience, Sustainable Energy and Marine Biodiversity Programme (RESEMBID), has produced innovative, multilingual education tools designed to enhance ecosystem education to the benefit of countries and territories across the region. The project focused on creating accessible and locally relevant marine ecosystem for adults and kids in the Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs). These new resources include unique marine science books tailored for primary and secondary schools in Bonaire and Turks and Caicos Islands. The books integrate local and Western ecological knowledge, providing an invaluable opportunity for schools to foster critical-thinking skills through easy-to-understand illustrated content. Additionally, the books are designed to line with school curricula, ensuring they can be seamlessly integrated and replicated. The books for Bonaire are written in Papiamentu and Dutch while the Turks and Caicos books will be written in English and Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole). Gabriela Pineda, project manager said: “We believe these are the first science books written in Papiamentu and Kreyòl Ayisye [on the subject of marine conservation]. Caribbean scholars are invited to visit MCB’s free Digital Library to see some of their protypes for various languages for use by linguistic communities in the region.” Starting next school year, students in Bonaire and South Caicos in grades 5 & 6 will have access to these new pancultural biology oceans literacy content using textbooks, online content or a combination thereof. The initiative is expected to impact students positively similar to the positive impacts the materials have made with seafaring linguistic communities associated with the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. For additional information on the RESEMBID Programme, visit: https://resembid.org, or contact Gabriela Pineda, project manager at: [email protected]. |
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