Since 2012, Hanns Seidel Foundation and the Palestinian Wildlife Society consult the Ministry of Education of the Palestinian Authority for integrating Environmental Education into the Palestinian school curricula. For this purpose, an inter-ministerial group has convened throughout the year 2012 in order to revise the existing curricula from grade 1 to 4.

From 4 to 6 November, 2012 the working group arranged an international workshop in Bethlehem in order to scrutinize the results of this process. During the course of the workshop, the committee formulated a matrix as the guiding framework for the future content development. However, this matrix will not only provide a plan for the content developers. Moreover, it defines the topics and ascertains that environmental education will not duplicate in different subjects of the school education in Palestinian primary schools.

Basing on these results, it will be now possible to effectively develop targeted content and state-of-the-art education methodology. The Ministry of Education in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Foundation and the Palestinian Wildlife Society will now define the next steps for authoring environmental education material, which will directly enrich the overall revision process of the Palestinian school curricula.

Barrie Cooper, International Education Manager at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK, described the endeavor quite positively: “If the recommendations from the workshop are implemented, then Palestine will become one of the leading nations in the world in terms of delivering environmental education.“

This project forms part of the ongoing efforts of Hanns Seidel Foundation of promoting environmental education in various countries and regions, such as Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Kongo, Peru, Croatia and South Africa.