Blue Trails - Navigating Ocean Literacy

Ovidius Highschool is part of the Network of European Blue Schools since 2020, from the beginning of this initiative. We applied then, to be part of the NEBS with a project focused on microplastic pollution, that was quite a new topic for us, and we developed a procedure in order to collect, analyze and produce data of Black Sea water pollution with microplastic. Furthermore, we continued to investigate this topic in the next years and to present our findings in several environmental projects contests for students, at local, national as well as European level. We also tried to find a way to reduce the impact of the plastic in our daily lives by encouraging the students to came up with an idea of producing bioplastic and integrating marine algae biomass in the process. while presenting our project and attending different events, like science fairs, we realized that the microplastic issues are quite unknown by the general public, both kids and adults. That is why we came up with those following objectives for our project:
- to increase the number of the students from "Ovidius" highschool that attend workshops on ocean sciences topics, especially on microplastic and to reduce the impact of plastic pollution in our school. We plan to involve at least 300 students (10 to 19 years old) in a series of 4 workshops, one hour length each. The workshops will be lead by the team of 10 students that developed during the last 3 years the project on microplastic.
- to expand our research on microplastic in the local freshwater bodies (lake Tabacarie, lake Siutghiol and lake Techirghiol) as well as the Danube rivers waters
-to increase the number of Romanian schools applying to be part of NEBS. We plan to create 3 partnerships with school from Iasi, Bucuresti and Brasov (3 cities in the central and NE part of Romania, far from the Black Sea coastline and to help them to "find the blue" and to create together with our students project on freshwaters, relevant for each community.
At the end of the project, we'll have several educational materials:
- firstly, a website that will display all the activities performed, both in Constanta as well as the exchanges with our partner schools
- 6 newsletters, one after each school exchange
- a guideline for 4 hours workshop on ocean literacy will be available, including activities and evaluation, workshop that can be deliver by the students for the students
-the procedures to collect and analyze microplastic from water samples or sand
- a collection of study cases for each school, with relevant water-related projects
The students directly involved in the project will be:
- 10 students to present the project already developed on microplastic
- 10 students as trainers
- 300 students attendee at the workshops
- 30 students participants in exchanges with the partner schools
- 400 students attending event organized during the Green week on ocean literacy.

The project is financed under PROBLEU - Promoting ocean and water literacy in school communities HORIZON-MISS-2022-OCEAN-01-08