LOESS partners presenting during the workshop in Barcelona. Image: Marta Castillo, REVOLVE

CURIOSOIL and LOESS Collaborate to Boost Soil Health Literacy

The CURIOSOIL project has initiated a close collaboration with the LOESS project, a sister project of Mission Soil, by participating in two workshops in May 2024. LOESS and CURIOSOIL are the two mission projects specifically focused on promoting soil literacy across society.

 

Both projects are part of the ‘Awareness and Engagement’ thematic grouping, which brings together the Mission Soil projects that aim to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, from communities, schools, citizens, consultants and international actors, to raise awareness of the importance of soil health, increase soil literacy and actively involve citizens in protecting and restoring soil health.

REVOLVE, the CURIOSOIL partner in Spain, participated in the LOESS reflection workshop held in Barcelona on 24 May. The workshop, led by the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), focused on sharing the methodology of the research on the state of soil education carried out by the LOESS partners. The Catalan LOESS partners also presented the preliminary results in the Catalan and European context. The meeting also allowed time for the exchange of some reflections and complementary information in working groups, based on the shared preliminary results.

On 29 May, the CURIOSOIL partners – University of Aveiro, Gaia Education and REVOLVE – participated in the first online project-to-project workshop hosted by LOESS. This session aimed to facilitate mobilisation and mutual learning between different Mission Soil and soil health related projects such as NBSOIL, SOLPYR, ISLANDR, SOLO, BEST4SOIL, SOILGUARD and WASTE4SOIL.

LOESS partners presenting the survey preliminary results during the workshop in Barcelona. Image: Marta Castillo, REVOLVE

During the workshop, participants presented their objectives and current activities, shared insights and experiences from their respective projects, discussed common challenges and opportunities in soil research and management, and identified potential areas for collaboration and synergy. This collaboration aims to avoid overloading similar audiences and stakeholders, thereby saving resources by addressing similar activities, projects and products.

A key outcome of the workshop was to identify the best methods for sharing collaboration requests and results while avoiding stakeholder fatigue. Suggested strategies included creating a common timeline for tracking project materials and outcomes, networking locally and across overlapping countries, aligning at the policy level, maintaining an open exchange in the field, and coordinating stakeholder engagement activities to combine efforts.

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