Naberi si čaj
Basic information
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Full project title
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Project Description
Herbalism is a big thing in Slovenia. One of those things that your grandmother teaches you and sticks with you through your whole life. Many people continue picking herbs but lack knowledge of sustainability which impacts nature. That encouraged us to create an educational website (nabericaj.si), a free-to-use tool about medical plants and their ways of usage to ease health issues. Through interactive filtering by name or health issue, a user quickly finds himself in the world of herbalism.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
In Slovenia, we have a strong tradition of picking medicinal plants like elder and linden flowers, chamomile, and nettle. Even from a young age, we are taught that for every disease, a plant grows. This custom is usually transmitted from grandparents to their youngsters and represents our rich cultural heritage. We Slovenians are extremely fortunate with our biodiversity that allows anyone to engage in picking medicinal plants and foraging. Even if you live in the capital city, only a walk away from the main roads gives us opportunities to become a herbalist or forager.
Due to mainly oral and thus superficial transmission of knowledge, we believe that we hold nostalgic and limited views on medicinal plants and especially lack knowledge of sustainable plant harvesting and usage. That encouraged us to create a project Naberi si čaj (eng. Pick yourself tea).
Our main product is an educational website (nabericaj.si) about useful plants, which is a free-to-use tool available to anyone. It describes important medical plants, their abilities to ease health issues, and their usage. Through interactive searching and filtering by name or health issue, a user quickly finds himself in the world of herbalism.
Along with the website (visited with around 2000 users monthly), we developed a community through social media that gives us excellent responses on the usability of the project. We believe we excite the community that is becoming more environmentally aware and active outside.
In our project, we raise awareness about sustainable plant picking and handling. The website is interactive, attractive, functional, and easy to use since we find aesthetics crucial. In terms of inclusion, the project provides users with knowledge, is improved in the interaction with users, and is free to use.
Our project is non-profit, and we currently do not have any benefits out of it. We put a lot of effort while creating it during our free time and all costs are covered by ourselves.
Key objectives for sustainability
We promote sustainable use of medicinal plants, strengthen environmental awareness, and promote a sustainable diet.
One of the most important goals of our project is to educate people on how to use medicinal plants sustainably. Many people who harvest medicinal plants lack knowledge of their sustainable use. They harvest them in a way that harms the environment. For example, they collect all the plants at one site or even uproot plants. If the plants have not yet been in the seed production stage, they cannot reproduce, and we will not find them at the same location next year. In this way, many plants are on the verge of extinction. We educate people to collect only a few plants at one site, to use scissors so that they will not uproot a plant, to pick an amount they will personally need for one season, and to never pick or harm the protected plants. We encourage cultivating plants, especially ones that are rare in nature.
With the knowledge we share, we strengthen environmental awareness. We help people to know medicinal plants, start appreciating their healing powers, and the nutrients they give. With this knowledge, our concern for nature, and the planet grows. We discovered that the more we are in contact with nature, the more we take care of it. It leads us to behave less consumeristically and more sustainably. Plants teach us modesty and moderation which strengthen our environmental awareness.
Many medicinal plants are also edible. A plant-based diet is more sustainable than a meat diet and has lower environmental impacts. It contributes to food and nutritional security and healthy lives. People can enrich their daily menu with (wild or cultivated) medicinal and edible plants. Because of their diversity, strong flavors, and nutrients that cannot be found in cultivated vegetables, people rarely reach for meat. We provide information on dishes that can be prepared with these plants and which vitamins and nutrients they contain.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Our goal was to make a user-friendly and modern web page that is simple and transparent to users. We created a web page where information is delivered creatively. Articles are equipped with many high-quality photos of plants for easy identification.
Naberi si čaj is a webpage with a modern design that is user-friendly, easy to use, responsive and transparent. We took special care about easier readability. Text columns are narrower, with most of 75 characters per line, which makes the text more readable. Also, the selection of fonts makes text easier to read.
Our goal is a good user experience where information about medicinal plants is gathered at one site and where users quickly get to the specific information. We have created quick filters where plants are divided into categories according to their usefulness and the symptoms they alleviate. For example, if our user has a cold and wants to know which medicinal plants to use to ease the cold symptoms, then clicking on the category “common cold” provides him with all the information about medicinal plants for the common cold and their ways of usage.
The information is presented creatively, which helps the user to more easily find the required information. Text is split into smaller sections for better transparency. We use interactive icons to provide important information about plants (for example, whether the plant is cultivable). The time bar is used to visualize the time of harvesting the plant. The plant overview is gathered in a section we name - plant passport.
Each medicinal plant is equipped with several high-quality photos for more accurate and easier identification. Photos show different plant parts and their growth in different seasons. We took most of them ourselves, others are under creative commons license. When we take photos, we take care that they are useful, knowledgeable, and aesthetic.
Key objectives for inclusion
Our goal is to raise awareness and educate people through quality content about medicinal plants, their ways of usage, and sustainable harvesting. We encourage people to cultivate medicinal plants in their garden, especially those that are rare or harder to find in nature. We also educate about toxic plants, how to distinguish them from others, and about protected plants or plants that have a limited amount of permitted withdrawal from nature.
We encourage people to spend time outside. Social media is a powerful tool for influencing people for their good. When we share information about currently available plants and share tips on their usage, we set an example for them. This way, we make them more active, connected with nature, and spend more time outdoors. When we spend time outside in the fresh air, our senses become sharper, awareness of the surroundings increases, and we become more mindful. Being physically active has many good influences on a human's well-being and health, both physically and mentally. In the long run, this can contribute to relieving public health.
The content on our website is free and accessible to everyone, regardless of social status. In this way, our nature conservation efforts reach everyone. Since this is the modern way to reach people and educate them, we are very active on social media. We are also members of different Facebook groups about medicinal plants, herbs, and foraging, where we post content about preserving plants, correct ways of harvesting, and usage. This way, we reach people already interested in this topic and would like to expand their knowledge.
We are accessible to all people who have some extra questions and comments. They also contribute to the improvement of the content with their experience and knowledge. They can reach us through our web page via email or through social media accounts. Every day about five people reach us through the mentioned channels.
Results in relation to category
Our project contributes to a more sustainable, healthy, attractive, and inclusive lifestyle. We have learned this through our own experience, extensive literature research, and feedback we get from our followers.
We taught people to harvest plants sustainably. The way we collect plants has an impact on the environment that is the reason we are delivering knowledge on how to harvest plants correctly. We got several responses from our followers who said that they learned from us.
We teach people to live a sustainable lifestyle connected with nature. Knowledge about medicinal plants and wild edible plants results in being connected with the environment and more sustainable. When we promote this kind of lifestyle on social media and our webpage, we indirectly make people spend more time outside and spend less time on smart devices. It contributes to their health in the long run.
We believe we have created a community of people that finds information about medicinal plants useful. New knowledge contributes to their lifestyles and health. Around 2000 users monthly visit the website (the number is growing). In only half a year, we reached 2,165 followers on Facebook and 1,882 followers on Instagram, which is a relatively good result since the content is in Slovene (the population of Slovenia is 2 million). We receive about five messages daily with questions and congratulations for what we are doing. Our community consists of followers which we encourage for medicinal plants and others who want to deepen their knowledge.
We have even been noticed by local media. Ljubljana TV invited us to present our project. They have found the idea interesting, especially because we are young. Stereotypically, the topic is more interesting to older people. However, we proved it wrong, since our project encourages more and more young people. Especially young people who follow us on Instagram are interested in this topic and joined the movement with great enthusiasm.
How Citizens benefit
Citizens gain new knowledge about medicinal, edible plants, and sustainability. They get knowledge to identify useful plants in nature and make various products that can ease symptoms of the disease, health issues, or even spice up the menu. At the same time, they gain self-confidence when they use their knowledge in real life. A special feeling arrives when we connect through foraging with our ancestors in some way and can find food and herbs outside of our backyard.
The citizens are also leading healthier lifestyles when they spend time outside picking plants. Search for the plants makes them walk longer distances and fulfill them with feelings of pleasure and excitement, which contributes to their physical and mental health. They are more aware of nature and season changing, how much life is there all year long, which makes them more connected to nature and at the same time with themselves.
Leading this kind of lifestyle even helps to lower consumption. When we realize how fragile nature is and how much harm we do when living a consumer lifestyle, we slowly begin to reduce our need for material goods and focus on the more important things.
Innovative character
With our innovative approach, we educate, make people active outdoors, and connected with nature. The website itself is innovative since it is the only of the kind in the Slovenian language. Our content is of high quality, and the website includes interactivity.
We identify our strategy to educate people to be sustainable and to spend quality time outside as innovative. With our website and our presence on social media, we give knowledge and make people curious to go outside and do something for themselves. We try to make them aware of nature and more sustainable in everyday life. We know that our innovative model works since we have got many positive feedbacks from people not involved in medicinal plants and nature before.
New and innovative is our website itself. Our webpage is the only one in the Slovene language that offers information about medicinal plants in one place. It includes innovative filtering, searching, and categories for plants, which cannot be found elsewhere. We started this project since we found out that many sources describe medicinal plants, but no site includes all significant medicinal plants in such an interactive way.
While searching for information, we found out that many sources have low-quality content, which is usually not double-checked. We identify the quality of our content as innovative. All content is double-checked between independent sources. Besides books and web pages in English, we also check scientific articles which offer verified information. In our articles, we cite all sources. It allows users to backtrack to the source and improves our content quality.
An important feature of our page is the part where it is listed which plants are currently ready for harvesting. We found ourselves in the situation when we forgot when a specific plant should be harvested, so we missed it for this year. With the help of our application, it cannot happen again since this feature is available at the visible position on our webpage.
