Czech Republic

Introduction | Highlights | Overview of activities | Documents | Contacts

The non-commercial character of the ELI program also enables it to use communication channels other than standard advertising - e.g. through an educational program for school children their parents can also be addressed indirectly. The advantage of such communication is that the information has higher credibility than advertisement or PR. Parents will see the information (in the form of school working sheets) and through helping the children with homework, parents will remember the delivered information. This makes information transfer through education programs very effective.

Educational Program - "Shedding Light on Savings"

The program is drawn up as an integral part of the ELI residential campaign, having two goals:

• to educate school children about efficient lighting and
  
• to deliver the message about the advantages of CFL to their parents through a trustworthy channel.

The program was prepared and organized in cooperation with an NGO, Tereza, as a school project on environmental education using methods of interactive education, learning through experience and project education. It will last from September 2001 to April 2002. The project is mainly focused on children aged between 12-15 years, but younger children can also participate in most activities
300 schools from right across the Czech Republic are expected to participate in the educational program.

Program activities:

Each school involved in the project will obtain two booklets with worksheets. The first one will be specifically focused on lighting (6 worksheets), whereas the second will generally deal with energy efficiency in households (15 worksheets) and will serve as background information material (the second booklet came from a previous ENERGY project of TEREZA).

Contents of worksheets on lighting:

• History of lighting - warm-up activity (the importance of light in everyday life) - Children talk to their grandparents about life in the past and try to have one evening without electricity - talking or playing games…
  
• Different light sources- description of the efficacy of different light sources based on an explanation of the physical nature of light (based on a simple experiment)
  
• Home exploration - Children fill-in a table - They find out how many bulbs they have at home and how long the bulbs are used per day.
  
• Exploration in shops- Children go to shops and look at the offers for efficient lighting products. They can talk to shop assistants about their experience with sales of these products.
  
• Calculation - how much money and electric power a family is able to save when using different light sources.

Competition
Each school class or school involved in the project can take part in the competition. Tasks for competition participants:

To prepare a report on their activities with the worksheets.
To prepare materials on energy efficiency, mainly lighting, and present them to other children and adults (posters, pictures and games….).
To motivate people in their town (parents etc.) to buy CFLs.
To involve parents - parents can write or draw about their experiences from their children's activities.

Prizes:

• One school - a professional energy audit of the school building to the value of about 50,000 CZK (sponsored by SEVEn);
  
• Three schools - a professional audit of lighting in the school building;
  
• Five schools - each school receives 10 CFLs for the best project's participants.
  

Competition Criteria:
The criteria will be as follows:the quality of the report and the quality of school activities. If there is more than one school in first place, a lottery will decide the winner.

Children are encouraged to use the internet (activities on the Czech ELI web page) and to monitor other ELI activities (e.g., the campaign, PR activities etc).