NEWS RELEASE

Brussels, 31 May 2005

Environment for kids at the EEA website

Children all over Europe are now offered environmental information in their own language in the kids' zone on the European Environment Agency website. The kids' zone was developed in recognition of the need to reach younger audiences, in this case children aged 10 - 14, about the state and trends of Europe's environment. "Education is about engagement. I would like to invite not only children, but also adults to make use of the features developed for younger audiences on our website to find out how we really can engage children in environmental issues", says EEA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade.

The kids' zone was launched in June 2004 alongside Honoloko, a pc game for kids developed jointly by WHO and the EEA. The kids' zone was then in English only. Despite this, it has received about 60,000 visitors from all over the world. The kid's zone is now available in all 25 EEA languages (i.e. the official EU languages + Bulgarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian and Turkish). Later this year, Honoloko will also be available in 25 languages.

The kids' zone aims to encourage European children to take good care of the environment and to create awareness of the environmental information provided by the Copenhagen-based Agency.

The central feature of the kids' zone is the Eco-Agent. The visitor is invited to become an Eco-Agent, and is as such sent out on missions within the areas chemicals, transport, water, air and climate change. The visitor starts out as an agent-trainee and must gather knowledge and pass tests to finally become a fully fledged Eco-Agent and compare him or herself with other agents. The agent can pass tests to raise his/her score - as compared to the other Eco-Agents.

The multilingual kids' zone was launched on 31 May during Green Week in Brussels.

Visit the kids' zone of the EEA website at: http://ecoagents.eea.europa.eu/ and Honoloko at http://www.honoloko.com/

About the EEA

The European Environment Agency is the leading public body in Europe dedicated to providing sound, independent information on the environment to policy-makers and the public. Operational in Copenhagen since 1994, the EEA is the hub of the European environment information and observation network (Eionet), a network of around 300 bodies across Europe through which it collects and disseminates environment-related data and information. An EU body, the Agency is open to all nations that share its objectives. It currently has 31 member countries: the 25 EU Member States, three EU candidate countries - Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey - and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. A membership agreement has been initialled with Switzerland. The West Balkan states - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro - have applied for membership of the Agency.