Environmental Education

World Environmental Education Day is celebrated every 26 January. This date has been commemorated since 1972, following the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden, in June of that year. There, the need for common criteria and principles to provide the peoples of the world with guidelines for preserving and improving the environment was raised. In this brief article we are going to tell you what environmental education is, what its importance is and what we have been doing in this area at Asoprovida.

What is Environmental Education?

Environmental education is a participatory process, it is a kind of emancipatory educationPaulo Freire would say. Since seeks to make people aware of the reality in which they live and, based on this, to change it.
It aims to stimulate in communities the ability to distinguish environmental problems, both global and local. It seeks to enable people to recognise the characteristics of the different relationships that exist between them and the environment, in order to foster a harmonious relationship between human activities and nature, promoting sustainable development and thus guaranteeing the life of future generations.

Why is Environmental Education important?

Environmental education is very important as it will enables society to learn about environmental issues, raise awareness and participate in problem solving to help protect the environment. Knowing what environmental conflicts exist in the region we live in, what are the causes and consequences of these conflicts, will help us to be more informed and responsible. 

Understanding what is happening to the environment is a challenge for educators, because it is necessary to instil concern for the environment in citizens and motivation to improve or maintain the quality of the environment. It also seeks to foster the development of skills to identify and contribute to solving environmental challenges. Environmental education stimulates critical thinking, does not defend particular opinions or procedures, but rather problematises communities by providing tools for problem solving and decision making.

What do we do at ASOPROVIDA?

ASOPROVIDA has been working hard on this issue for more than 20 years in different countries around the world, both in Latin America and Europe. Our aim is to to instil in people a yearning to care for life in all its forms, through workshops, outdoor activities, conferences, etc., seeking to spread this love and respect for nature and for the beings that live in it, be they plants, animals or other human beings. 

ASOPROVIDA has a wide range of workshops related to environmental care, (Recycling, Home gardens, Transgenics, etc.), as well as to the search for a healthy life for the individual and society (Personal development, Healthy eating, Prevention of addictions, etc.). One of our favourite workshops is Guardians of LifeThe aim of this training programme for schoolchildren is to reflect on the environment, the functions and services it provides us with, and the need to train ourselves as guardians of our planet. Today, on the day of environmental education, we are going to tell you what it is all about.

Guardians of Life

The workshop begins with the theme "The planet as a home, as a mother and as a living being", where the planet is located in space, we reflect on the fact that it is our only common home, that it is like a mother because it gives us everything we need to live, and it is like a living being because there is life and energy in its cycles, but due to the imbalance of human activities the planet is sick. We raise the need to form Guardians of Life. 

Then we are taught about the functions of the four elements, that we can find them in nature and also within ourselves; and that even though they are not living beings, we need to take care of them because without them we could not live. 

We continue to reflect in the third theme, "Living things", on how living things relate to each other through food webs and the importance of the different kingdoms. 

In the fourth class, the central one, the role of man is raised: We begin to ask ourselves the why and what for of man in nature, we point out that both plants and animals have a clear role: to serve life. And we reflect that perhaps man's role is the same: to serve life as life serves him. 

We continued talking about the history of man, how man's relationship with nature changed as he became more and more separated from it. We reflected on the environmental damage we have caused: pollution, deforestation, animals in danger of extinction, etc. Until finally we presented the proposal to put together with our guardians of life a SOLUTION. Yes, environmental actions that could lead us to alleviate a problem close to the children taking the workshop. In this way we go from theory to practice, leaving a concrete experience of caring for nature.

From the ASOPROVIDA team, and as environmental educators, we believe that The work carried out by volunteers from different environmental groups and teachers at different educational levels on environmental issues is key to achieving a better world, one that is more sensitive to what is happening around us, more humane, more empathetic. We congratulate environmental educators on their day and invite all those who read this article to do their bit from wherever they are, because we can all do something to take care of nature. As the Uruguayan journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano rightly says "Many small people, in small places, doing small things, can change the world.

Ing. Agr. Porporato Andrea

ASOPROVIDA INTERNATIONAL