PetraSapiens is a small organization founded in 2006 whose purpose is to promote Earth, Planetary, and Environmental Sciences to kids and the general population. Its main activities are lectures and workshops on topics such as dinosaurs, the evolution of life, the evolution of Man, the mineral world, Earth, the planets of the solar system, the planet Mars, climate change, waste characterization, recycling, etc During our 9 years of activity, we have now given about 1100 presentations to about 33000 people in numerous schools and science festivals all over the Quebec province from Montreal to as far as Lac St. Jean, Fermont and Schefferville.
We have always received very positive feedbacks from kids and teachers. Actually, many teachers have requested us not only to come back to their class for other presentations in the same year, but to come back also year after year. After our presentations, it is also pretty common to hear kids telling us that they want to become either a geologist or a paleontologist when they will be grown up. Some teachers even told us that they are quite surprised to see the sudden interest and implication of some difficult students during our lectures. Since 2008, PetraSapiens has obtained numerous grants from the Canadian Geological Foundation, which allowed us to purchase materials to complete some of our activities. Here’s a short summary on how all this CGF funding was used.