LOESS project

The Horizon project LOESS: ‘Literacy boost through an Operational Educational Ecosystem of Societal actors on Soil health’ aims to raise awareness on the value of soil across Europe. Under the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, the LOESS consortium of twenty partner organizations are joining efforts to map, transform, co-create, and evaluate educational initiatives and living labs in fifteen countries in Europe to enhance soil health awareness. The consortium will connect academic and societal actors and establish transdisciplinary Communities of Practices and Educational Innovation Groups in Europe.

The project will identify the state of of soil health education for awareness by exploring current educational practices and their underlying assumptions; will create educational visions for establishing new relationships with soil and a culture of awareness and care; will transform, co-create and pilot innovative educational practices, methodologies and tools. Such methodologies and tools will be distributed by campaigning and promoting hands-on activities related to soil education through Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL). All in all, LOESS will boost soil awareness by building an educational ecosystem that enhances capacity building, knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning.

The three years long LOESS project started in July 2023.

Partners involved

The LOESS project will involve twenty organizations under the coordination of WILA Bonn:

• Wissenschaftsladen Bonn e. V. (WILA Bonn), Germany - Project coordinator
• European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium
• Vetenskap & Allmänhet (VA), Sweden
• University of Innsbruck (UIBK), Austria
• University of Sassari (UNISS), Italy
• Justinmind SL (JIM), Spain
• Technological University Dublin (TUD), Ireland
• University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava (UCM), Slovakia
• Wageningen University (WU), Netherlands
• Center for Promotion of Science (CPN), Serbia
• Social Innovation Institute (SII), Lithuania
• Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (AMU), Poland
• Controvento Società Cooperativa Sociale (ControV), Italy
• Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), Spain
• ANS Education and Consultancy Ltd (ANS), Turkey
• University of Brescia (UNIBS), Italy
• University of Vechta (UoV), Germany
• APOPSI Information and Communication Technology, Consulting and Training Services S.A. (APOPSI), Greece
• The Queen's University of Belfast, United Kingdom
• Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary

LOESS has received funding from the European’s Horizone Europe research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No. 101112707