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Areas Urbanism & territory, Tourism and Economic activities Tourism planning and Economic activities Save Posidonia Project festival: hundred plus activities to educate people, save seagrass meadows

Save Posidonia Project festival: hundred plus activities to educate people, save seagrass meadows

Foto presentacio sppOfficials gathered today to unveil details about the Save Posidonia Project festival. Scheduled to take place October 12-15, the four-day programme of over one hundred activities encompasses sports, culture, education and the environment. Tourism secretary Alejandra Ferrer, on hand for the morning presentation, framed the festival as part of something bigger—Discover Formentera in October—which she predicted would be “a fun-filled event for many tourists”.

Water sports
An organised ride round the island will unfold in stages and four different modalities: kayaking, kitesurfing, windsurfing and paddle surfing. Other activities will be related to meditation and yoga.

Show in town centre
Most of the activities will play out in Sant Francesc's town centre. Between plaça de la Constitució, avinguda Porto Salè and jardí de Ses Eres, stands will play host to arts and crafts displays featuring posidonia seagrass.

There will also be a fashion show engineered by local designers. The event will culminate with a “subaquatic runway show” starring two very special models: Gemma Mengual and Cristina Piaget.

For four days, the town square will be transformed into audiovisual space featuring a rotating lineup of environment-related projections. Other shows, which will run the gamut from sustainable mobility and live painting performances to community beach cleanups and sailboat gatherings, will all have one thing in common: sustainability.

Kids' workshops
Of course, it wouldn't be a festival without children, which is why Thursday to Saturday a spate of kids' workshops aim to use a blend of fun and education to get their message across. There will even be a cohort of Mallorca school children here to better understand environmental sustainability.

POSIDONIA FORUM
The Posidonia Forum happens Friday, October 13, in the municipal cinema. The programme will feature conferences and debates with world-class organisations, government administrations and personalities dedicated to tourism and the environment. Later gatherings will include roundtable discussions on the future of tourism and the environment on Formentera.

Environment councillor Daisee Aguilera said the gathering was focussed on “taking stock of posidonia conservation efforts and planning for how the task will look moving forward”.

83,000m2 of sponsored seaweed
Donations to date put the area of adopted posidonia meadows at 66,656 square metres (m2). With an additional 17,000m2 already pledged and set to be added this week, a grand total of 83,000m2 has been safeguarded. Money raised till November 1 will go to fund posidonia conservation projects. Donations can still be made at https://www.saveposidoniaproject.org/es/, at a cost of one euro per metre squared.

Conditions of entry are available on the Balearic employment office, or BOIB, website, as well as the home pages of the Council and the Save Posidonia Project. Applicants will have two months to submit project proposals beginning November 1, when donations close and a definitive fundraising total is established. Projects will be split into three categories: environmental stewardship, awareness and science. Winning projects will be chosen by an expert panel.

Two tour operators—Germany's TUI Care Foundation and Dutch company Corendon—are studying the possibility of covering 100% of the cost of two Save Posidonia Project initiatives.

Outreach
The 2017 Save Posidonia Festival has been scheduled to coincide with the celebration of Year of Sustainable Tourism. Though conservation fundraising is one priority, another—and no less critical—is hammering the message about vital safeguards for posidonia oceanica, tourism that is respectful of the local ecosystem and taking steps to insure Formentera remains a sustainable destination.

For his part, tourism advisory board chief Carlos Bernús hailed the more than twenty individuals of ten different backgrounds expected to be covering the event. Most of those that have expressed interest in the project represent nationalities that visit Formentera already, such as the Italians, Germans, French, Dutch, etc. “The Formentera brand will be about natural heritage, conservation and sustainability,” said Bernús.

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