News
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Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)
The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), in collaboration with partners SNV and Farm Radio International (FRI), launched a new project “Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)” for Ethiopia and Kenya on 1 July, with support of the IKEA Foundation.Vegetable consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest of any region in the world. To bridge the ‘vegetable gap’ people need opportunities to produce and market vegetables to generate income and contribute to an accessible, affordable supply of nutritious food.
‘Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)’ plans to establish 200 vegetable business networks (120 in Kenya, 80 in Ethiopia) to engage an estimated 4000 women and youth in market activities designed to close the ‘vegetable gap’ and improve livelihoods and nutrition.
V4P&P will engage ‘business champions’ to guide the formation of Vegetable Business Networks (VBNs) of women and youth as they pursue collective action in vegetable production and marketing in urban and peri-urban areas. The champions will facilitate their networks’ access to information, training, financial or other services, and input/output markets, and serve as liaisons with local governments.
V4P&P places special emphasis on regenerative agricultural technologies including biochar, compost, green manures, crop rotation and beneficial microbes to nourish the soil and reduce or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It will be well positioned to capture rising consumer demand for traditional Africa vegetables.
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FameLab International Finals 2020: Science Communication competition
The Finals of FameLab 2020 have been postponed until October 2020. However, FameLab national events continue to take place with revised dates and/or in digital formats where possible. For the latest situation in each country, please check the national FameLab webpage/social media channelsThe following countries have confirmed their participation in FameLab 2020:
Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Kazakhstan, Korea, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Malaysia, Netherlands, Qatar, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand and UK.
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Citizen science projects to join from home
These are challenging times for everybody around the world. If you are confined at home but would like to participate in citizen science projects, the website EU-Citizen.Science might offer you a new activity that you can join.View the project list and search for a project by title, keyword, country, etc. For example, you can join:
Folding@Home – Coronavirus, connect to researchers around the world working to better understand the 2019 Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and accelerate the open science effort to develop new life-saving therapies. Folding@home is currently based at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine;
Yellowhammer Dialects project, originally limited to the Czech Republic and now in the UK, New Zealand, Poland and Switzerland, to map the global geographic distribution of birdsong dialects of the Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella);
Dark Sky Meter, a project where you can measure artificial light at night (light pollution) with an iPhone app which acts a photometer. You can send the results to light pollution researchers worldwide;
UMAPIT, an urban biodiversity recording app, developed by University of Manchester, that aims to encourage active engagement with wildlife monitoring especially in urban environments and to highlight the wealth of biodiversity in urban areas;
CrowdWater, a hydrological citizen science project developed scientifically by the University of Zurich in which citizen scientists collect hydrological data in the categories water level, temporary streams, soil moisture and plastic pollution, using the CrowdWater | SPOTTERON app.
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Learn STEM Online Conference Innovative STEM education
Learn STEM welcomed 22 international speakers and more than 700 registered school teachers, practitioners and experts from all five continents, and evaluated a huge success!If you could not participate or want to revisit the online conference, you can enjoy the full programme and download all presentations.
You can also watch the whole conference in a video recording (3 hours).
Learn STEM looks forward to continuing their discussion on innovative STEM education together with you!
Further information from Dr Christian M. Stracke, Learn STEM Coordinator through the contact form.
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DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) receives 3-year contribution of funding from FinELib
FinELib, the consortium for Finnish universities, will co-fund DOAJ for a 3-year period based on the SCOSS model*. DOAJ will therefore continue to be independent; funding to the programme being via donations, 22% of which comes from sponsors and 78% from members and publisher members.
All DOAJ services are therefore free of charge, including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available. DOAJ also operates an education and outreach programme across the globe, focussing on improving the quality of applications submitted.
At 26 May 2020, DOAJ includes:
- 14,649 Journals
- 11,659 being searchable at Article level
- from 133 Countries
- giving a total of 4,908,803 Articles
*The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) is a network of influential organisations committed to helping secure OA and OS infrastructure well into the future.
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Nutrition Education for Children: empowering and mobilising youngsters as nutrition activists
Since Children for Health came into being, in 2013, they have been asked to help with nutrition education around the globe; their added value is to ensure that support to a cadre of activists is built into each programme.Children for Health have also helped with programme design, training, materials development and evaluation and have co-created nutrition education materials with experts and practitioners in many countries and projects. All materials have a participatory approach at their heart and are free to download and reuse.
The Report on the project and field work in Children’s Participation in Learning and Action for Nutrition and Health (PCANNS), Changara, Mozambique is now available, in addition to a film and slide-share resources:
- Report (May 2020) English, Portuguese
- Slide show (Feb 2020)
- YouTube Film
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COVID and KIDS: A Video Animation from Malawi
UNICEF with support from UKAid is influencing children in Malawi to practice 5 key actions to prevent COVID-19: frequent handwashing with soap, physical distancing, use of the flexed elbow when coughing and sneezing, avoiding touching the face (mouth, nose and eyes) and staying at home.Watch and enjoy on YouTube
More information contact: cmauluka@unicef.org
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Global Hand Hygiene Day 2020
Celebrated every year on 5 May, Hand Hygiene Day aims to mobilize people around the world to increase adherence to hand hygiene in health care facilities, thus protecting health care workers and patients from infections.Particularly relevant this year, the campaign theme “SAVE LIVES: Clean your hands”, is aligned with the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, and aims to recognize nurses and midwives as front-line heroes who deserve acknowledgement and appreciation, and highlight their critical roles in infection prevention.
The main goal of the Global Hand Hygiene Day 2020 campaign is to recognize that handwashing is one of the most effective actions you can take to reduce the spread of pathogens and prevent infections, including the COVID-19 virus. Health workers and community members alike can play a role in preventing infections by practicing regular and frequent handwashing.
As part of the campaign, WHO and partners aim to:
- Make hand hygiene a global priority
- Inspire hand hygiene and behaviour change
- Engage with health care workers in their role in clean care and the prevention of infections.
The campaign also makes a call to action to policy-makers to provide safe work environments for nurses and improve staffing levels.
On 5 May, join in celebrating nurses and midwives around the world.
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“Films for children” Takorama International Film Festival 2020
Organised by the NGO “Films for Children”, Takorama is an international film festival aimed towards teachers, parents and pupils from 3 – 15+ years old around the world. It hopes to create a new link and connection between all.The main objective of the festival is to allow children to discover new films, new stories, new visual universes and to give their opinion. The festival is also an opportunity for all students to continue school activities at home and stay in touch with teachers.
Beyond cinematographic and artistic education, the festival aims to affirm the educational dimension of cinema by positioning it in particular alongside literature and art as a resource capable of accompanying and supporting the set of lessons; it will allow children to view moving images not just as entertainment but as a communication tool.
Sixteen short films have been selected from the catalogue of “Films for Children”. A grid of selection to decide the fit between content and age of the children has been elaborated in collaboration with the organization “3-6-9-12” as well as Serge Tisseron, a senior research fellow at University Paris VII.
During the festival, the children are invited to vote for their favourite film and also to participate in educational activities offered to teachers and parents.
The closure of the first edition of the International Festival Takorama of 2020 depends on the current context of CORVID-19 and the reopening of the schools.
Supported by UNESCO, the French Ministry of Education and a range of NGOs.
Available in 18 languages from www.takorama.org
Arabic, Bengali, Bhasa, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili and Ukrainian.
Website: www.takorama.org
Twitter: @takoramafes
Facebook: @takoramafestival
Instagram: takoramafestival -
Earth Day 2020 for climate action
April 22nd 2020 will mark the 50 anniversary of the Earth Day and this year the event will be dedicated to the theme of climate action. In 1970, Earth Day launched a modern environmental movement and placed environmental progress amongst the best ways to improve the world.Especially at the time of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, it is important to reflect on the fact that human health and planetary health are inextricably linked. It is therefore crucial to remind ourselves that if we do not demand change to transform our planet and meet our climate crisis “our current state will become the new normal — a world where pandemics and extreme weather events span the globe, leaving already marginalized and vulnerable communities even more at risk”.
Climate change represents indeed the biggest threat to the future of humanity and life-support systems that make the world habitable: “the urgency has never been greater, and the stakes have never been higher – we face mass extinction of species, catastrophic pollution of oceans, destruction of communities and displacement of millions. In short, we are in a climate breakdown”.
Earth Day 2020 will demand that leaders take science seriously, listen to their people and push for action at every level of society to stop climate change. This year, the event is going digital for the first time in its history, with 24 hours of global mobilization, conversations, calls to action, performances, video teach-ins and more. Everyone is encouraged to participate and take meaningful actions to make a difference.
Learn more from earthday.org and look into the Earth Day Live page for virtual activities. Find inspiration, take action and check for events around you by visiting the "Take action" page.