16 February 2012

The project “Citizenship and Sustainability for the 21st Century – Pathways to a sustainable community in Azores” started in 2009, aiming, in a first stage, just the islands of Terceira and Pico. Coordinated by the Education National Council (CNE), this project intends to create teaching strategies to promote the education for sustainable develop in schools. Now, in the school year of 2011/2012, starts a second stage, enlarged to Faial and, in the next school year, to S. Miguel.
The signing of the protocol among several entities involved in this project took place last Saturday, in the protected landscape of Monte da Guia.
According to Ana Maria Bettencourt, president of the CNE and coordinator of this project, the Azores seems like a perfect test tube for its implementation, not only by the highlight that it’s given in the Region to environmental matters but, above all, for being in implementation phase the Regional Curriculum for the Basic School, that has as key feature precisely the education for sustainable development.
As she explained to the media, this project aims also take the children and the young to learn outside from school. According to Ana Maria, the rules governing the national education system are still too rigid, but the results in the Education of most developed countries, mainly in North of Europe, shows that one of the ways to the learning is precisely outside the physic school space, allowing to the students learn inserted in a context that, in this case, passes by the Azores natural resources.
In the first stage of the project, the aim was to give value the biodiversity and the geodiversity existence in the Region, promoting the knowledge and the preservation of it. In this field, was given importance to the diffusion in schools of the knowledge  produced by the University of Azores, by the Geopark, by the Regional Secretariat of the Environment and the Sea, among others institutions.
In this second stage, the idea is to enlarge the project as in geographical reach, extending it to other islands, as with regard to the contents approached in it. From now on, the aim passes also by focus the attention in the Azorean historical and cultural patrimony and in the appreciation of healthy life styles.
The second phase of the project was formalized with a protocol signature among 25 entities, as schools, government departments, environmental associations, autarkies, among others.
In 2012, the financing of this project is assured by the Luso-American Foundation for the Development.
To Graça Teixeira, this project is very important because “allows to show how is work in context”, using the natural resources around us. According to the Regional Directorate of the Education and Training, only knowing well the nature that surrounds the students can learn to preserve it. As stressed Graça Teixeira, the project achieves “objectives of the Regional Curriculum”, that passes by the “contextualization of apprenticeships”.

Source (Tribuna das Ilhas)