As a project approaching completion, LOESS presented a set of free, reusable education and engagement resources that other Mission Soil projects can adopt.

On 19 June 2026, the LOESS project was represented by Saurabh Singh, postdoctoral researcher at Technological University Dublin, at the online meeting of the Mission Soil Pollution and Remediation Cluster, coordinated by the Mission Soil Platform. The cluster brings together projects funded under the EU Mission A Soil Deal for Europe to share their results and explore how the outputs of one project can be reused by others.

LOESS was invited to contribute to the part of the meeting dedicated to projects nearing completion — an opportunity to share the project’s work and legacy. LOESS — Literacy Boost through an Operational Educational EcoSystem of Societal actors on Soil health — is a Horizon Europe project, with partners across 16 countries, focused on soil-health literacy: strengthening how soil is understood and taught across education systems and wider society.

While the cluster’s focus is soil pollution and remediation, the LOESS contribution was deliberately practical. Rather than remediation science, it set out transferable education and engagement resources that any Mission Soil project can reuse, whatever its thematic focus.

The presentation was grounded in the project’s needs analysis (Deliverable 2.2), which surveyed 1,302 educators across 15 countries. It found that, although 79% of educators consider soil teaching important, only 38% feel adequately trained to teach it — a gap that has shaped the resources LOESS has since developed, alongside a clear demand from educators for hands-on, community-connected learning.

Three of those resources were highlighted as ready to reuse. The CERL Module for Lecturers, is a free online module that helps university educators embed Community-Engaged Research and Learning into their soil teaching. The accompanying workshop, “From a Soil Problem to a Research Question”, guides participants from a real, local soil issue to a researchable question, drawing on scientific, political, local and cultural knowledge. And the targeted campaign plan (Deliverable 4.5), sets out four coordinated campaigns — with ready-made templates and a downloadable toolkit — for reaching policymakers, schools, universities and the wider public.

All three resources are free and openly available. They, and the project’s wider collection of soil-education materials — can be explored on the LOESS project website.