Oldenburg. On 16 June, Prof. Dr. Joerg-Olaf Wolff and Ph.D. student Rosanna Schoeneich-Argent took part in the awards ceremony of the Barthel Foundation funded competition "Frieslands Helden der Heimat"  (Heroes of the Friesian Homeland) at the "Waisenstift Varel", Lower Saxony. Their project proposal on information on the issues of marine litter won them the second place in the category „Environmental Protection“. They were awarded with the certificate of the prize, remunerated with 5,000 Euros, by Lower Saxony’s Minister of the Environment Olaf Lies.

In collaboration with Technical Methodology for Biology and teacher training students of Oldenburg University, Wolff and Schoeneich-Argent are aiming at developing a "Litter Suitcase" for school/educational purposes. It will contain video clips, presentations for teaching, games and experiments as well as instructions for field campaigns on marine litter.

At the beginning of the year, the Gertrud and Hellmut Barthel Foundation (Varel) and the Hilfswerft gGmbH (Oldenburg) jointly started the competition “Frieslands Helden der Heimat“ on the topics “Formation and Education“ as well as “Environmental Protection“. Half of the 84 projects which applied for the competition were eventually given the opportunity to compete for a range of prize sums from 2,500 to 10,000 Euros. A jury of experts were supported by votes of citizens via the internet.