The website of the Committee of Nature use, Environment Protection and Ecological Safety of the City of St Petersburg was launched in December 2009 as a new service for citizens. The project NEAT is further developing it with new attractive elements and increasing the use of the portal by adding new levels of communication with citizens.
During the project, the different channels of communication are analyzed and incorporated with the launched website. Use of social medias will be tested as a new approach of passing information to the targeted audiences. Also the use of the websites will be increased by thorough visitor analyses of the sites.

During the project implementation a competition among students will be announced for development of new on-line environmental games about the Baltic Sea. Environmental themes turn out to be more attractive and thought-provoking if they are presented in the form of eco online games. Online ecogames not only distribute information on the ecological themes, but also teach users new models of behavior. More than that the games can unite people as people by simple registration on the web portal can share their opinions and make comments, so it is possible to provide a new type of environment for the communication. Prize-winners’ games will be integrated in the portals of partners, which will make them more attractive especially to young people and will help young computer experts to sell their services at the labor market. Website games are a new way to St Petersburg to disseminate environmental information to specific target groups.

For the school children competition will be organized aiming at development of comics to eco-tips, which also will be located at the developing web-portals. The results of the children ecocomics competition will be a part of a separate website for the competition on ecocomics and eco online games, where also a field for opinions exchanging and commenting on ecocomics and ecogames will be provided.

This project is based on the “Awareness raising through a new tool in St Petersburg” and also on the previous projects on the increase of information, such as InfoCoSM, MATRUSCHKA.

1. to explore the most effective pathways for knowledge acceptance and adoption by population and the most effective means of knowledge diffusion that is likely to change behavior or daily practice
2. to test social media as a channel for awareness raising on sustainable development. By social media we mean Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, etc. www.vkontakte.ru/, www.odnoklassniki.ru/, ICQ, wikis and opinion sites, photo and video sharing.

1. to improve the use of website portal www.infoeco.ru through thorough visitor analyses.
2. to develop and enrich eco-portals of project partners
3. to involve more actively young people in environmental activity
1. Baltic sea inspired Comics competition
2. Baltic sea inspired game competition in Finnish

• Committee of Nature use, Environment Protection and Ecological Safety of the City of St Petersburg
• Commission on Environment of the Union of Baltic Cities
• VALONIA
• Eco-fellows Limited
• City of Kotka
• City of Turku

Project is in part financed by the Finnish ministry of Environment, part of program Environmental cooperation between Finnish cities and St Petersburg.