Cyprus-Forum.com

[devil]

Many of you know my environmental/energy in Cyprus website at www.cypenv.org. I'm considering adding a section aimed at Cypriot children of possibly three age groups (say, <10, 10-15, >15) simply explaining some of the fundamentals of the subject in an interesting way. My problem is that I don't really know how to write for kids, especially young ones and I think the best way may be to let the kids write for themselves. I'm not sure how to go about doing this. One idea that I thought of was, perhaps, a competition.

I'm open to all suggestions.

[Sotos]

Devil I think it will be hard to find many children that will sit and read about the environment without any use of force on them Maybe you should make some kind of game out of it with many images or something. That might attract some attention

[andytandreou]

devil, if i where to be open and honest about your site i would say it needs a total re-do. It's just like a big basket of knowledge about the environment and nothing else. The encyclopedic information is linked to Cyprus only because the site is called "Cyprus: the Environment", other than that it looks like a total copy-paste from a US or UK site.

You could have sections like:

"How to save 30% fuel by driving differently"

"Steps to solar power your home"

"Who to contact to get funding"

"How to donate to Cyprus environmental charities"

A bunch of facts won't attract anyone to your site, let alone children. I can easily find out about the ozone or amazon destruction from a billion places on the net like Wikipedia. You missed out the simplest fact of sustainability and Cypriots. The fact that Cypriots will only be sustainable if they can save money. Your site should have sections like:

"How much money you can save if you install double-glazing" (a simple chart would do here)

"Best value double glazing installers in Cyprus" (chance for advertising)

"How to save £££ on your water-bill"

Try and model your site so that it appears to have a purpose, try and become the one-stop-shop for people who care about the environment (and live in Cyprus) but don't know what steps to take (however small) to become more sustainable. Trust me, you can have an effective site without even mentioning the words ozone, depletion or sustainability.

[devil]

I'm sorry, but you have missed the whole notion of the site. It is meant to be informative of the general state of the environment and energy relative to Cyprus. There may be two or three of the essays that have only global implications, rather than specifically Cypriot ones, because they may not be directly of concern but are nevertheless of indirect concern (the one on sequestration, which is the most technical one, springs to mind).

And I have no intention, at this time, to treat practical advice for householders; there are many sites already for that but no other informative ones on the cause of the problems, much less allow any vendor promote their products or services.

As for the notion of an environmental site which never mentions the words "ozone, depletion or sustainability.", this would be so laughable.

As for the suggestion that this was plagiarised from a UK or US site, I find this more than a little insulting. I can assure you that it is all, 100%, my own work and is the result of many years' experience working for the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, Forests and Landscape (BUWAL) and for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). You may be interested to know that I have on my office walls a number of citations and awards, including from UNEP and from the US EPA.

[andytandreou]

I'm sorry, but you have missed the whole notion of the site. It is meant to be informative of the general state of the environment and energy relative to Cyprus.

In that case sorry. You obviously want to cater to a smaller slice of the population, perhaps to students or school children who want an academic resource for environmental information. In this case you MUST use the words "ozone, depletion and sustainability". An academic site like yours which doesn't use such words is (like you said) laughable.

My argument was that at some point in time a site like yours needs to make a choice, it meets a "fork in the road" so to speak. It must make one of two choices:

A) If it will become a commercial site which caters to the masses with useful information like "how to save money" or "How to get funding for Eco-friendly projects". A site which conducts some useful research so that the average Joe doesn't have to. This is by far the hardest path but the most rewarding as you could help thousands of people save money but taking small steps like adding water bags in their loos.

OR

B) You could take the easy route (which you have) and publish a site which caters to 1% of the population which might be interested in it's content, like students or school children (for essays and projects). I call it the "easy route" because the information contained within is simply regurgitated, overly-articulated jargon that YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY CLAIM TO BE THE CREATOR OF as you obviously didn't launch a mission to the poles to detect any holes in the ozone NOR did you take any measurements to detect carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.

The choice is yours.

[devil]

But I have been on official missions to track down the sources of emissions causing ozone depletion and to reduce them!

[Dhavlos]

Maybe, if it is just simple information ,a good thing to have would maybe have a picture and a small, short caption underneath...

For example, have a boy/girl throw a piece of litter in a bin, with the caption saying 'dont litter, use a bin!'

eg. have some kids looking over a platform onto solar panels and the caption saying 'solar power will help us power things in the future'

Do you see what i mean? Or is it too simple?

[devil]

Thanks, yes, that is the kind of thing I was thinking of. Even animation. Certainly not long screeds.

I have asked the Ministries of Education and the Environment (shortened names) whether they will support the enterprise (not financially but perhaps asking round the schools for kids themselves to come up with suggestions, ideas and even pics/text).