The Ministry of Environment organized a special training course for educating kindergarten teachers on the accurate knowledge of environmental protection. The goal was for teachers to apply the teaching methods learned during the training in their classrooms and further enhance the diversity and accuracy of promoting environmental education for young children.
Two civic cafes and two workshops were conducted in the East and Central Districts respectively. The civic cafes involved group discussions on environmental issues, with experts and scholars serving as table leaders to address problems in real time and provide correct concepts. A total of 125 participants in this session. The workshops included capacity-building sessions, group exchange learning, and small-group breakout discussions. A total of 121 kindergarten teachers participated, and 61 environmental education teaching sessions were conducted. After returning to their schools, the teachers have put in more measures to implement and promote environmental consciousness in early childhood education.
The Ministry of Environment has continued to promote environmental education for young children through diverse movements. In recent years, podcasts have been making progress by leaps and bounds due to the pandemic in previous years. In the year 2022, the Ministry of Environment established the "Listen to Stories, Love the Environment" environmental education podcast program. Starting from April 18, 2023, a new episode has been released every Tuesday, with a total of 40 episodes. The podcast has been available on the most-used major platforms such as Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Sound on, Spotify, and KKBOX. Told in a storytelling manner, the podcast has presented the distinctive thematic picture books selected from previous years' environmental education competitions, aiming to cultivate environmental protection knowledge in young children and lower-grade students, allowing environmental education to take root at an early age.
To raise children's awareness of environmental protection, the Ministry of Environment organized the Environmental Education Picture Book Carnival from October 14 to 15, 2023. This event brought together 77 outstanding works selected from the environmental education picture book competitions in 22 counties and cities across Taiwan. The selected works were put on display to promote environmental education picture books among teachers and parents. Throughout the exhibition, a total of 3,344 people attended. Immersed in the locally-rooted environmental education picture books, teachers and parents were guided to share problems in the places they live around. The goal was to facilitate the sharing of ideas about caring for the environment and to focus on environmental consciousness at a young age. With a spark of ideas on how to address environmental problems, children can also reflect on how to develop a greater overall environmental responsibility in their daily routines.
