This project is aimed at forest owners who wish to showcase their forestry to the next generation and add value to their forestry enterprise by inviting and connecting with second level students. The need for this programme came about by one of our members who is a Woodwork Teacher at Boyne Community School who has identified the necessity to establish links between woodwork classes in schools and local Forests owners. Some of our members have previously supplied timber from local forests to leaving cert students, which was used in their leaving cert projects. The need for this initiative was clearly identified by our previous Woodland to Workshop Project.
This project will consist of the establishment of pilot scheme between a local forest owners and a local secondary schools in four counties (Cavan, Louth, Meath and Monaghan). The project will consist of:
- Identifying both the schools and the Forest owners (Forest owners will also be a small scale sawmill owner or have linkage to same).
- Designing educational modules to suit transition students, Ag Science Students and Woodwork students.
- Planning and delivering excursions by students to local forest in each of the four counties.
- Compiling all the information from steps 1-3 above into a manual that can be used by any forest owner/secondary school in Ireland to successfully run a similar programme in their area. The manual will include:
- Cover all aspects of establishing contacts with relevant schools.
- Developing and compiling the educational modules.
- Designing and creating permanent forestry plots to facilitate student engagement.
- Compiling a generic health and safety and risk assessment plan.
- Holding an open event (for all interested forest owners and wood technology teachers) to showcase the concept of bringing the local forest in bringing the classroom into the This event would also be used to launch the manual/template that will enable other Forest owners across Ireland to replicate the project.
