The second edition of the Zinkers educational platform Awards, whose purpose is to recognize the best works and initiatives in Spain in Primary and Secondary Education on energy transition and sustainability, recognized the Nuestra Señora de El Carmen de La Unión school with the first prize , popularly known as El Asilo. 3,100 centers in Spain attended this call, 171 of them from the Region of Murcia.
The award ceremony gala took place at the Teatro Real in Madrid, presented by the television show Jordi Hurtado. The teacher Ginés Caparrós received the diploma, on behalf of El Asilo, as absolute winner in the Secondary category, thanks to the project developed by the third-year F students. In addition to the diploma, the school takes a cash prize of 15,000 euros to develop projects for innovation and methodological transformation, and recreational and educational activities in the field of science and sustainability. Likewise, the students will visit the Repsol Industrial Complex in Cartagena, where they will learn about some of the projects they are developing to advance the first advanced biofuels plant in Spain.
The activities carried out during the course that have earned them the prize have been twenty, among which the ‘Hunger Dinner’ stands out. On the first Friday of February they had bread and water for dinner, as a reflection “for all the people on the planet who do not have enough to eat.”
The creation of a game, ‘Challenge 2030’, was also valued by the jury. Inspired by the board of the goose, the four participants compete to reach the goal by answering questions about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), pollution, environment, renewable energy, social networks, mathematics, technologies, ingenious challenges and trends. In addition, the educational community of the center carried out a reforestation in the Sierra Minera of fifty species of juniper (tetraclinis articulata) “to help stop the contamination of the Mar Menor with the vegetative filters of the trees that drag the miners who arrive to the sterile boulevards to the lagoon.”
On the ground, they made several nest boxes in the technology workshop in order to attract the hoopoe (upupa epops), which is a bird “predator of the plague that devastates the pines, the processionary moth (thau meteopea pityocampa).
At school, says Ginés Caparrós, they are aware of “the unfair society that we have created, without respect for ourselves, our home, our environment.” They believe that “not enough is being done” and for this reason they accept “the challenge that was launched in 2015 as a solution, the 2030 Agenda”.
The Asylum, according to Caparrós, “wants to serve as an inspiration to other centers so that they stop to think about the problem that this planet is enduring, it is crying out for help and we want to help and raise awareness in the task of creating a slightly better world” .
For the evaluation of the candidacies received in this second edition of the Zinkers awards, a committee of experts in education, pedagogy and sustainability analyzed the deliverables and manifestos made by the students of the centers, the result of a shared reflection that includes commitments, learning and future actions to contribute to a more sustainable planet, and with the idea that it transcends the limits of the classroom, raising awareness among more people and generating a positive global impact.
Zinkers is a digital educational program promoted by Fundación Repsol to face the challenges of the future through knowledge and academic rigor, to respond to the concerns of young people and contribute to improving their environment and preserving the planet.
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