10/27/2023 – 19:59
Six children and teenagers from different Brazilian regions discovered, this Friday (27), a bit of the Cerrado’s biodiversity outside of books, in an immersive experience at the Brasília Botanical Garden (JBB). On the ecological trail, a professional guide presented the biome’s fauna and flora in seeds, springs and water courses, small animals, such as an armadillo, and typical trees to the young people and their teachers. Everyone traveled to Brasília at the invitation of the French Embassy in Brazil, as they were winners of the FrancEcolab Brasil 2023 program.
The objective of the program is to awaken young Brazilians and educators to the importance of environmental preservation and the sustainable development of the planet. The winners of the third edition of the project were dubbed ecocitizens by the organizers of the initiative for contributing to the improvement and conservation of the planet for future generations.
During the 1.8 kilometer (km) walk along the JBB Krahô Trail (named after the indigenous people of Tocantins), students and teachers revealed that environmental education, little by little, has promoted changes in their lives, such as reducing of consumption, the reuse of some resources, the recycling of products and the fight against waste. As a result, many say they have become more aware of their individual role.
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Maria Clara Soares, a 5th year student at Escola Municipal Anísio Teixeira de Niterói, in Rio de Janeiro, discovered herself as a multiplier of knowledge. “My vision has changed, and I know that we have to recycle more and try to save resources to preserve plant and animal species. Now, I have passed this project on to other classes at my school.”
Andrya Pietra Sousa de Jesus, who is in the first year of high school at a public school in Manaus and is one of the winners of FrancEcolab Brasil, recalled that, this year, she witnessed for a few days the Manaus sky filled with smoke from fires in the Amazon Forest . By participating in the program, Andrya said she began to value the nature that surrounds the city where she lives more. “I learned the importance of preserving our forests, the importance of having a better relationship with the environment. We need the forest, we need the Atlantic Forest, the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Pampa, to live. But people are not giving this much importance and consider the city as more important, as if this were the solution to everything.”
Her teacher at Escola José Carlos Mestrinho, Frenchwoman Kadidiatou Sow, who has lived in Brazil for a year, said she was already environmentally conscious when recycling household waste, but was surprised by people throwing rubbish on the floor, the abusive use of plastic and with the lack of environmental education even for those who live in the Brazilian Amazon. The foreign language teacher highlighted, however, that workshops, visits from specialists and support material offered by the program already contribute to changing the reality of teachers and students. “I noticed that they left this project with more knowledge. And I think the most important thing is to educate our children, because they are the future, and they are the ones who will encourage and be part of this change that we so desperately need.”
Coming from Macapá, professor Flávia de Jesus dos Santos Pontes reported that the Escola Estadual Professora Marly Maria e Souza Silva was awarded in the first two editions of the program. In 2023, the winning project, the book The Jaguar Jussara and His Friends against The Terror of the Woods, was made with recyclable material, fruit and vegetable seeds, such as pumpkins. Flávia noticed a change in the students’ consciousness after this experience. “We recycled materials to create the project booklet and, then, they learned about preservation and recycling issues so that they do not throw trash on the floor, separate trash, such as paper, plastic and glass. We work on all of this with them in the classroom.”
During his visit to the federal capital, first-year high school student at Colégio Liceu Franco-Brasileiro do Rio de Janeiro João Vitor Lopes helped plant yellow ipê seedlings in the Botanical Garden. For João Vitor, the planet still has a way to go, but FrancEcolab Brasil awakened in him a sense of urgency to reverse processes of environmental degradation. “I understand that the situation needs to be changed now, because we may not have time for that. So, we, teenagers and children, are responsible for this change. Without us, there really won’t be any way to effectively save Brazil’s forests. I always try to develop practices that are known to be good for the environment, such as recycling, at school, at home and in my building.”
Small changes in habits, such as turning off the tap when washing long hair and brushing teeth, were adopted by Sofia Diniz, an 8th year elementary school student in Contagem, Minas Gerais, since she started participating in the French project. Now, Sofia tries to influence her family to have more ecological and sustainable routines.
“If we continue at the stage we are in, we will have global boiling and there will no longer be plant species, there will no longer be the oxygen necessary for us to survive or be able to have a stable and good life either”, fears Sofia.
Professor Brian Diniz Amorim said he appreciates young people’s leading role in finding solutions to problems that impact humanity. “As a teacher, I see that we were able to provide students with the opportunity to think at a scientific level about very complex problems and seek their own solution to these problems, in which they are the protagonists of the solution.”
“Every now and then, we are faced with very imposing challenges, and students, through the mobilization of all the knowledge acquired throughout their years of schooling, are able to think of a solution to a very complex problem”, adds Brian Amorim, teacher at Sofia school.
FrancEcolab Brasil is interdisciplinary and, therefore, teachers from different disciplines, in addition to French, were able to participate in the program. At Liceu Franco-Brasileiro, in Rio, teacher Heloísa Helena Leal Azevedo revealed that this greater involvement infected the entire school and intensified the internal dispute to participate in the program. “It’s a war. And we have to educate students so that they can know how to preserve what we have. And teachers also undergo this education. Once they participate, I think their knowledge grows a lot.”
The director of Biodiversity at the Brasília Botanical Garden, Estevão do Nascimento Fernandes de Souza, who guided visitors along the Krahô Trail, wanted to make the experience transformative by showing details that usually go unnoticed in the Cerrado biome. Souza believes in children’s potential to protect and respect the environment. “We provide basic education and, thus, they are able to multiply this knowledge when they arrive home. And we see that children are more interested in understanding. They ask more questions and interact with us more.”
FrancEcolab
Created in 2021 by the French Embassy in Brazil, FrancEcolab is an educational program aimed at students from bilingual public and private Brazilian schools, teaching French and Portuguese.
In the previous two years, topics involving the protection of oceans and rivers and the fight against microplastics were addressed. The third edition had the theme The Forests of Brazil: Preserving Biodiversity. According to the French Embassy, in 2023, the initiative brought together more than a thousand students, aged 7 to 18, from primary and secondary education, from 57 public and private schools across Brazil, who participated in workshops, tours, visits to laboratories, lectures and training online and competitions throughout this year.
The Educational Cooperation advisor at the French Embassy, Laura Le Mounier, explained why the project’s focus is on children and young people. “The program allows us to train a generation of ecocitizens. They are very excited about this topic. And it is gratifying to see that they are changing these minds, these mentalities towards a more environmental perspective.”
“The future of the planet depends on future generations, also because they are the target audience, because they are much more open, much more easily aware and will soon make parents and adults around them aware. So, for me, it is an essential tool to contribute to evolution and raise awareness among the population about issues in favor of environmental preservation”, declared Hélène Ducret, Educational Cooperation Attaché at the French Embassy.
In the three days that mark the end of this edition, Hélène Ducret took stock of the work carried out. “We noticed the interest of girls and boys, families, pedagogical teams and also those responsible for schools and Education departments. For all of them, education in favor of the environment has now become a necessity. So, the program corresponds very well to the needs they designed to foster transformations within the school. There is also an effect on didactics and pedagogy. The teachers who participate in the projects have now gotten into the habit of working together and they really enjoy it.”
All the winning projects of FrancEcolab 2023 will be announced this Saturday (28), at a ceremony in Brasília, at the French Liceu François Mitterrand, at 11 am.
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