31/05/2005 - Children
all over Europe are now offered environmental
information in their own language in the kids'
zone on the European Environment Agency website.
The kids' zone was developed in recognition
of the need to reach younger audiences, in
this case children aged 10 - 14, about the
state and trends of Europe's environment.
"Education is about engagement. I would
like to invite not only children, but also
adults to make use of the features developed
for younger audiences on our website to find
out how we really can engage children in environmental
issues", says EEA Executive Director
Jacqueline McGlade.
The kids' zone was launched in June 2004
alongside Honoloko, a pc game for kids developed
jointly by WHO and the EEA. The kids' zone
was then in English only. Despite this, it
has received about 60,000 visitors from all
over the world. The kid's zone is now available
in all 25 EEA languages (i.e. the official
EU languages + Bulgarian, Icelandic, Norwegian,
Romanian and Turkish). Later this year, Honoloko
will also be available in 25 languages.
The kids' zone aims to encourage European
children to take good care of the environment
and to create awareness of the environmental
information provided by the Copenhagen-based
Agency.
The central feature of the kids' zone is
the Eco-Agent. The visitor is invited to become
an Eco-Agent, and is as such sent out on missions
within the areas chemicals, transport, water,
air and climate change. The visitor starts
out as an agent-trainee and must gather knowledge
and pass tests to finally become a fully fledged
Eco-Agent and compare him or herself with
other agents. The agent can pass tests to
raise his/her score - as compared to the other
Eco-Agents.
The multilingual kids' zone was launched
on 31 May during Green Week in Brussels.
Visit the kids' zone of the EEA website at:
http://ecoagents.eea.eu.int/ and Honoloko
at http://www.honoloko.com/
About the EEA
The European Environment Agency is the leading
public body in Europe dedicated to providing
sound, independent information on the environment
to policy-makers and the public. Operational
in Copenhagen since 1994, the EEA is the hub
of the European environment information and
observation network (Eionet), a network of
around 300 bodies across Europe through which
it collects and disseminates environment-related
data and information. An EU body, the Agency
is open to all nations that share its objectives.
It currently has 31 member countries: the
25 EU Member States, three EU candidate countries
- Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey - and Iceland,
Liechtenstein and Norway.A membership agreement
has been initialled with Switzerland. The
West Balkan states - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
and Serbia and Montenegro - have applied for
membership of the Agency.
