Community service-learning activities and experiences of the Hungarian national park directorates

Abstract

Compulsory community service-learning was launched in 2012 in Hungary. We studied how the Hungarian national park directorates have cooperated with secondary schools during the past six years within this program via giving tasks for secondary school students to fulfil their community service in protected areas. Eight of the ten national park directorates host students, most of them constantly since 2012. Number of cooperating secondary schools varies between 8 and 50 per each directorate; almost all of them are situated in the operational area of the directorate. Each national park hosts 20 to 700 students annually (greater numbers mean groups of students rather than individuals). Some students spend only a couple of hours community service at a national park directorate, while others fulfil the whole 50 hours compulsory service at one directorate. The main activities that secondary school students do are helping in festivals, summer camps, and national park information centres; nature conservation works, habitat reconstructions, research, monitoring; and maintenance works. Majority of the directorates handle the community service-learning program primarily as a means of environmental education and attitude forming, to create effective contact with secondary school students who are otherwise hard to reach. We present some good practices from this point of view.