Accepted Poster
Poster Short Abstract
The poster explores public engagement activities and showcases ways to involve students, educators, municipalities and other stakeholders in monitoring and combating marine pollution. It will showcase project results, such as the Toolkit for Social Impact and a playful, multilingual schoolbook.
Poster Abstract
The iMermaid project addresses the challenge of chemical pollution in the Mediterranean Sea through three pillars: prevention, monitoring, and remediation. The poster focuses on the prevention pillar and the project's societal impact efforts through participatory tools that promote awareness and empower communities to act.
To foster public engagement and agency—especially among youth—the iMermaid project developed the Toolkit for Social Impact, as well as the iMERMAID Schooling workbook:
The toolkit provides a set of participatory methods and educational resources for diverse audiences, including residents in the iMERMAID use case regions (Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia), regional stakeholders (e.g., local authorities, utilities, industry), and educators. It offers a scalable model for community-driven prevention of chemical pollution. Future plans include expanding its use and refining its content based on feedback, strengthening the role of education and participation in safeguarding the Mediterranean Sea. For a more interactive poster session, some of the tools will be demonstrated (e.g. Lego Serious Play, Deep Democracy).
The schooling workbook is a multilingual (English, Spanish, Italian, Greek and French), interactive resource featuring 16 “missions” that guide students to observe their environment, conduct experiments, and take action. As part of the workbook, iMERMAID has developed a reward system for participants in the different missions. For each completed mission, students earn starfish “badges” to promote participation. The success of the reward system will be further explored on the poster. Finally, best-practices and learnings from the implementation of the schoolbook and toolkit will be presented, including the Cyprus 2024 Summer School.
Poster Session