Universe Awareness - Inspiring Young Children with the Beautiful Universe

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Universe Awareness - Inspiring young children with the beautiful Universe Dr. Carolina Ă–dman, Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands. odman@strw.leidenuniv.nl Abstract Universe Awareness (UNAWE) is an international programme for a worldwide scientific culture. UNAWE is designed to expose economically disadvantaged young children, aged between 4 and 10 years, to inspirational aspects of astronomy. By conveying a feeling for the scale and beauty of the Universe the main goal of UNAWE is to broaden the minds of young children, thereby helping to form tolerant and peace-minded adults. Additional goals of UNAWE are to enhance the children's understanding of the world and to demonstrate the power of rational thought. UNAWE is motivated by the premises that access to simple knowledge about the Universe is a birth right and that the formative ages of 4 to 10 years play an important role in the development of a human value system. Astronomy is an ancient and multidisciplinary field, an ambassador for all sciences and a driver for technology that the UNAWE initiative hopes to use to broaden children's perspectives. The development of UNAWE is driven by the needs of the children and of the people delivering the programme in each participating country. Target regions for the full programme will include diverse environments from inner cities in Europe to rural areas in developing countries. Ingredients of the programme include the development of country-specific materials, the provision of training for programme coordinators and the initiation of an international network for communication by teachers and others involved in the programme. Successful Venezuela, developed projects in Astronomy.

pilot activities have already been implemented in Tunisia, Colombia, South Africa, Indonesia and India. UNAWE is being as a bottom-up programme that will carry out or participate in several countries starting in 2009, the International Year of

Introduction From the dawn of history, the beauty of the sky and its intimate connection with the development of human civilisation has inspired countless generations with a sense of wonderment. In the modern day, astronomy plays a unique role in conveying the excitement of science to the general public. This is due in part to the extraordinary images and discoveries that are conveyed almost on a daily basis from satellites, telescopes and all modern astronomical facilities. Why Astronomy?


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