Alonso Miguel promotes the School Environmental Awareness Activities Offer for the 2022-2023 school year to Vocational Schools

Jan. 26, 2023

This morning, the Regional Secretary for the Environment and Climate Change, Alonso Miguel, was present at the Escola Profissional do Sindicato do Escritório e Comércio da Região Autónoma dos Açores (EPROSEC) - vocational school in a session to disseminate the School Environmental Awareness Activities Offer for the 2022-2023 school year, promoted by the Regional Secretariat, marking the World Environmental Education Day.

In this initiative, also attended by the Regional Director for Youth, Eládio Braga, representing the Regional Secretary Maria João Carreiro, Alonso Miguel said that “this is an offer also conceived and directed to Vocational Education, as a fundamental part f the regional education system and as an element that promotes the development of the Region”.

“Environmental education is one of the fundamental pillars of the mission of the Regional Secretariat for the Environment and Climate Change, which works to raise community awareness, cultivating a sense of belonging and demonstrating the importance of protecting and enhancing our natural heritage”, he said.

The Regional Secretary stressed that “it is with this objective that each school year we make available the School Environmental Awareness Activities Offer, aimed at the Region’s schools, divulgating the work developed by the different government departments in the areas of environmental competence”, adding that “the environmental education actions included in this offer are intended, through the educational system, to make young people increasingly aware and awake to environmental issues and to identify themselves as active agents in the preservation of the natural heritage of the Azores”.

According to Alonso Miguel, “the educational offer for 2022-2023 schoolyear presents even greater thematic richness and diversity, maintaining the actions related to nature conservation and preservation of biodiversity, through the various existing environmental management mechanisms, namely the Island Nature Parks, the Azores Geopark, the Biosphere Reserves and the LIFE projects in force, adding issues of great relevance for the Region and that are huge challenges, such as climate change and circular economy”.

The Regional Secretary took advantage of the symbolism of the World Environmental Education Day to announce that “the Regional Secretariat for the Environment and Climate Change will resume, already in March, the Regional Meetings on Environmental Education, which have not taken place since 2019, with the holding of the XV Regional Meeting on Environmental Education, under the theme “Environmental Education as a pillar of a sustainable future”, which will take place on the island of Terceira.

Alonso Miguel also announced that in compliance with a “commitment assumed in the Government Programme of the XIII Regional Government, the Regional Secretariat for the Environment and Climate Change will reinforce the Region's corps of Park Rangers, with the hiring of 12 more staff members, highlighting the fundamental role that these professionals play in monitoring, preservation and conservation of the natural heritage, as well as in environmental education and awareness for the population”.