GLOBE program restarted with American help

Elementary and high school students will learn about the environment through testing, observation and measurements

The US Ambassador Kate Marie Burns, accompanied by the Minister of Environment Naser Nuredini, the Minister of Education and Science Mila Carovska, the Mayor of Gjorce Petrov Aleksandar Stojkoski and the director of the organization Eco-consciousness Ana Colovic Lesoska, today visited the primary school "Micece A" in Skopje, where they were presented the implementation of the GLOBE program in the school and the application of the donated equipment. This phase of the project, which has been implemented in the Republic of Northern Macedonia since 1998, is financially supported by the US Embassy in Skopje, and is implemented through the Center for Environmental Research and Information Eco-consciousness.

"Mirce Acev" primary school in Skopje is one of the 27 primary and secondary schools in the country that received appropriate technical equipment and gained practical training and skills for testing and measuring the quality of atmospheric air, water and soil.

In the specific conditions of the KOVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning and the Ministry of Education, with the financial support of the US Embassy through Eco-consciousness, organized GLOBE online training for teachers on the occasion of April 22, Earth Day from Northern Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro, which not only renewed the efforts to continue the implementation of the Program and its regional expansion in specific conditions, but also enabled the newly recruited professors to be trained to implement the activities of the program, and the professors who already had experience to get acquainted with the new protocols for its successful implementation.

Eco-consciousness, in partnership with the MoEPP and the Ministry of Education and Science, in the past 6 months helped 27 primary and secondary schools in the country to receive appropriate technical equipment funded by the US Embassy and some of the schools to be trained to conduct examinations, observations and measurements. areas of research: atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, pedosphere and Earth as a system.

With the conducted trainings and the donated technical equipment consisting of meteorological houses, barometers and thermometers, PH meters and chemical reagents, the students led by their teachers will be able to learn about the conditions in the environment, by measuring and monitoring the

environmental parameters, their analysis and comparison. with measurements from other schools in the GLOBE network.

The efforts of the Ministry of Education and Science and the Government to encourage and develop critical thinking and awareness of climate change and the environment among children and youth have greatly contributed to the development of such practical programs. The results are already visible in practice, because they are part of the reform processes that started this school year in primary education and are part of the new Concept. In addition to the changes in the curricula, the Ministry of Education and Science is making changes in improving the teaching conditions in schools, which are of the greatest interest to students. To bring the science material closer together and make it interesting and easier for students to understand, the MES has invested in 260, all-new science classrooms, as they are best studied through experimentation and research. "Mirce Acev" primary school is one of those schools.

The peculiarity of the GLOBE Program is that each of the involved schools receives its own coordinates which are entered as a measuring point in the world map of GLOBE schools, which so far includes more than 120 countries with over 37,000 schools, trained about 40,000 GLOBE trainers and about 183 million data entered. That is why this program has benefits for students, professors and scientists.

The GLOBE program is funded by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and implemented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US National Science Foundation, and the US Department of State.