Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer noted that his Ministry and the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change have been working in an effort to disseminate environmental awareness among children for the last ten months and thanked Minister Kurum for his support.

 

Minister Özer pointed out that they have included environment training as an elective course of 7th and 8th grade students and then changed the name of the course into "environment training and climate change".

 

"Later, we have organized training programs for teachers about environmental awareness and zero waste culture. Although they were not compulsory, almost all teachers actively attended these training programs," said Özer.

 

He also mentioned the "Environmentally Friendly 1000 Schools Project" carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change under the auspices of Emine Erdoğan.

 

As a part of this project, rain water and waste collected from Solar Energy Plants are used in selected 1000 schools in different parts of the country and environmental culture was disseminated.

 

Minister Özer reminded that his Ministry has established libraries from recycled waste for the first time in its history as a part of the "No More Schools without Libraries Project".

 

"Currently, we have 1,325 zero waste libraries established from recycled materials in our schools. Right now, we are initiating a new project with the environment academy of the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change with the purpose of maintaining the sustainability of environment education," stated Minister Özer.

 

Expressing his wish to raise strong individuals equipped with cultural and environmental values in addition to academic skills, Özer said, "Schools are the places where we would teach these values. We have 19 million students and 1.2 million teachers. In this light, every step we take about environmental awareness will have a deep impact in the future. Story sets will make an important contribution to this effort."