Undergraduate students’ participation in actions for participative environmental management in public schools of the state of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The Elos de Cidadania Program - Environmental Education for Integrated and Participative Water and Forests Management of the Atlantic Forest - had the mission of promoting and supporting the organization, development and strengthening of collective processes that promote the parcipative and integrated management concerning the water resources and the Atlantic Forest’s biodiversity from school. From 2013 to 2015, the project was attended by forty-four undergraduate Biological Sciences students from UERJ from both presential and distance learning (EAD-CEDERJ) modalities to develop actions for a critical, transformative and emancipatory Environmental Education in ninety-six school units located in fifteen counties in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The undergraduate students were responsible for providing workshops on Environmental Education for training over 3000 students from schools enrolled in the program and the actions were developed with the participation of over 10,000 students. In these activities, it was possible to disclose and discuss with the school communities some issues recorded in local environmental diagnoses, which affect the plant and animal species as well as human populations of the Atlantic Forest. The participation of graduate students in the Elos de Cidadania Program has allowed a complementation of the initial training related to important concepts in Environmental Education, building collective solutions for daily environmental issues faced by schools and by the communities that surround the territory, other than creating the opportunity to have a direct contact between scholars and the social and environmental reality of students from public schools of the State of Rio de Janeiro. In this report we present the activities carried out by the students and their results in school communities involved in the program.