Steps in the Plantain Project: The Ideas, Activities, and Experiences of the Plantain Project, a Scheme to Safeguard Children and Their Environment

HKirsti Vindal Halvorsen
Agder College, Norway

Citation: Halvorsen, Kristi Vindal. (1995). “Steps in the Plantain Project: The Ideas, Activities, and Experiences of the Plantain Project, a Scheme to Safeguard Children and Their Environment.” Children’s Environments 12(4): 66-86. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/

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Abstract

Plantain is used in herbal medicine to heal wounds. In the Plantain Project, the vulnerable aspects in children's local environment have been focused on. The project is designed to bring about measures to safeguard children in their own milieu in a local community in the town of Kristiansand in the south of Norway, through the participation of local nursery and primary schools. Fifty percent of the children in the primary school are immigrants. The idea behind the project is that shared cultural experiences outside in nature will, besides strengthening the bonds between adult and child, also increase community spirit and give people a greater sense of belonging to the local area and of being part of nature. In concrete terms this means that approximately 200 children go out on regular weekly excursions in nature. Parallel with this work being carried out by the primary school and nursery school, a municipal interdepartmental working group is looking into ways of making physical improvements in the housing area.

Keywords: child care, children and nature, children and community, environmental education, multicultural education.