Eco Parliament of Guimarães - Eco Parliament of Guimarães is based on the principles of youth participatory democracy in order to promote active reflection on sustainable development Goals by young people from middle and elementary school
Description
The Eco Parliament (EP) is an anchor project of PEGADAS - Guimarães Ecological Program for the Learning of Sustainable Environmental Development, and it is intended to the elementary and middle schools ofGuimarães. Young people actively involved in environmental decisions concerning the city and county they inhabit is the main objective of EP. The project has been contributing to youth dialog and promoting active citizenship raising awareness of each one's role in building a sustainable world. This 4th ed. (2018/19) is devoted, as usual, to the SDG Agenda and is intended to identify environmental challenges and the search for sustainable solutions.
Eight Schools groups of Guimarães participate in the current 4th edition of EP, 32 students from the four teaching cycles, divided into teams of four elements, promoting the social inclusion of students from middle and elementary school.<br />
The EP hopes to ensure that students can be able to acquire necessary knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development throughout the education for sustainability, selecting for it one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and to identify environmental challenges in Guimarães seeking sustainable solutions. Based also on non-formal education methodologies, it provides the increase of discursive skills, the organization of scientific information and the presentation of ideas and solutions in a teamwork environment. Divided into three parliamentary sessions, Presentation of the Environmental Challenge, the Methodological Structuring of the Environmental Solution and the Final Voting session, the EP is strongly accompanied by regular technical visits into the scholar space. <br />
the gradual construction of the projects proposed by the students is made possible since the EP does not contain any elimination phase but a continuous process of learning and development.<br />
Whenever necessary (when the project proposes infrastructural changes for example), projects can be operationalized under the Promoting Participatory Budgeting.<br />
The participatory democracy on which the EP is based proposes that environmental solutions be the result of public and collective discussions - between the political class and citizenship in various moments of presentation. Participatory democracy is understood within the framework of the EP as a set of youth proposals that demand from local problems/Challenges,which, in the last analysis, promote the creation of diversified channels of access to public issues.<br />
This project spread a good practice that operates throughout youth debate, in order to experience the sustainable development policies together with the main agents for environmental change: the young community.
The beneficiaries of the project are all the 14 Schools Groups of Guimarães. Annually, 50 participants are involved between teachers and students, and so many others indirectly. In this 4th edition 8 School Groupings participate.
After an invitation to all School Groups and the opening of registrations, a public session is held with the presentation of the main documents, namely the Registration Document and Participation Rules. Considering that this project is based on the principles of environmental sustainability, the communication is mainly carried out through digital channel.
The EP is operated by work groups composed of 4 students from each of stage of basic education and is divided into two essential pillars of action: the technical work done in the school space (before each parliamentary session) and the parliamentary sessions for presentation and voting process of the project.
The technical work visits are carried out in each enrolled school aiming at the orientation and discussion of the Environmental Solution between peers, some dynamics of Non-Formal education; presentation of the objectives of the sessions, discussion, orientation and follow-up of the project.
Regarding the methodology used to structure the EP projects cwe implemented the S.M.A.R.T methodology - it means that youth can organize each project in order to be Specific (applied in the first parliamentary session) -; Measurable and Attainable ( applied in the second parliamentary session); Realistic / Relevant and Time-bound (in the third parliamentary session).
The second pillar of action concerns the structural division of the EP in three main parliamentary sessions corresponding to three presentation which are not eliminatory but rather moments of deep development of the projects.
The first two sessions happens in Guimarães Landscape Laboratory and aims the structuring and methodological planning of the work and the third and final happens at the Noble Auditorium of the University of Minho.
The presentations are evaluated by an Internal Jury composed by the participating groups and an External Jury composed of invited members from City Hall of Guimarães, Minho University and Alto Douro e Trás-os-Montes University.
Each corresponds to a 50% weight in the final evaluation and its voting occurs in each of the three parliamentary sessions: the evaluation of the first parliamentary session worth 10% for the final count, the second 15% and the third 25% correspondingly.
In addition, a training course on SDG 2030 is held for participants and also a trip to the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic in order to understand the democratic apparatus and its interference with sustainable development goals.
For example, The Taipas School group was the winner of the 1st edition of the Eco-Parliament of
Guimarães. "Replacement of Asbestos boards" at the School of Taipas was the theme chosen
by the students. The Abação Cluster School, with the project "The Barn", an abandoned barn
capable of hosting cultural and environmental projects open to the community and cross
generation, “won” the second place, while the Fernando Távora group school, whose work
presented was entitled "Say no pollution!" with strong and efficient solutions to improve
indoor school and outdoor air quality.
In this 4th edition, the following schools and projects are involved:
SDG 15 - Life on Land
School Group of Abação
Environmental Challenge: Abação recaptures the native forest
ODS 14 - Life below water
School Group of Professor Abel Salazar
Environmental Challenge: The Sea also belongs to us
ODS 7 – Affordable and clean energy
School Grouping Arq. Mário Cardoso
Environmental Challenge: Nature, the energy that transforms us
ODS 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
School Group of Afonso Henriques
Environmental Challenge: Sound, Noise!
ODS 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
School Group of Fernando Távora
Environmental Challenge: Vegetable Garden ... of all and for all
ODS 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
School Group of Santos Simões
Environmental Challenge: MES- Sustainable School Handbook
ODS 7 – Affordable and clean energy
School Group of S. Torcato Valley
Environmental Challenge: Use to Protect and Save
ODS 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
School Group of Virgínia Moura
Environmental Challenge: H2O_doce - Promotion of water consumption
We can measure the success of the initiative by the repeating inscription of some schools. Each edition we formally validate and collect opinions in final meeting done with all the teachers and students enrolled.
In the young people, we were able to measure an increase in self-confidence, an argumentative and discursive capacity, the interest of relate knowledge obtained in a school context into the EP and also a greater sensitivity to environmental and sustainable development issues, and a growing interest in municipal and environmental policies.
Due it success, the EP in 2017 was one of the five selected for the second phase of the " National Good Practices Participation Award", and reached a 2nd place in the jury evaluation.
PEGADAS was recognized in 2016 as a friend of the International Year for Global Understanding (IYGU), an initiative of the 'International Geographical Union' (IGU) that addresses the way human beings transform and shape nature, realizing the global consequences of their daily behavior; and the EP, pointed out as an exemplary measure by the way in which, through the principle of Participatory Youth Democracy, it attracted young people from basic education to the local debate.
We can also consider as innovative the following:
The inclusion of students from different realities, from middle and elementary school forming multi-age groups. Today, more than ever, there is a high regard for the involvement of the young people in the processes of criticism and a proposal of work on sustainable development and environment, considering that young people are one of the most important true agents of environmental change; The technical and scientific accompaniment during the whole process with regular visits to the school space; The presence in the three parliamentary sessions of representatives of the political power; The deepening of Agenda 2030 and other plans of national and international relevance; Active and participatory advocacy to identify environmental challenges at the county level based on global dialogues.
Transportation needs for visits and work meetings (that happens three times in each school), the transport of students and teachers to the parliamentary sessions is assigned/contracted by the Municipality of Guimarães. For all this, we can say that the benefit is well above the residual costs. The infrastructural needs of the EP, such as the place where the parliamentary sessions are held, are also assured and free of charge, since the first two sessions take place in the auditorium of the landscape laboratory and the third in the noble auditorium of the University of Minho, partner institution of the Laboratory of the landscape.
Regarding the replicability of the project, the EP is an on going project that is already in its fourth edition. Recently we have felt from other peripheral counties to Guimarães an interest and recognition of the practice which may be worth to the realization of replicas, something that would make us very happy. In the Portuguese case, we consider it to be an excellent example of direct youth and child participation in Agenda 2030, and we do not know of similar initiatives.
The EP, because it allows the identification of environmental challenges at the council, parish, neighbourhood or school space, has established a vision of a "territorial sounder" in the most varied geographical scales.<br />
The EP is the result of the intention of the Landscape Laboratory to fulfill its institutional mission and the explicit will of the Guimarães City Council to open up to youth, and subsequently to the rest of the community (teachers and parents).<br />
Working as a promoter of civic participation and a more critical look at contexts and environmental preservation, the EP, meets the challenge of today's urbanity involving the Youth community in public discussion and decision making in the city in particular in the special challenge that is the integration of young people in this type of process.<br />
By providing the reflection and discuss of an Environmental Challenge defined by a youth group, the EP is a plural and crucial voice for the future of the generations, a viable alternative for youth participation in environmental matters.<br />
New forms of governance can emerge as well as new tools that foster the creation of a more just and participatory society in matters of environment and sustainable development.<br />
EP promotes the moral imperative acting as a governance mechanism, which means a multiplicity mechanisms that can translate into later mechanisms environmental change for action.<br />
In this sense, the impetus of the EP is framed within a set of mechanisms of local-based democratic innovation, oriented towards participation. This learning and the appeal to participation configures the character of self-determination of citizenship and pedagogical and transforming character of public participation. The space of dialogue, discussion and participation makes this project a defender of the rights and duties of Youth citizenship.<br />
Equally, it stresses the need to increase participation, not only as a desirable end but also as a means through which it can achieve more and better levels of development and youth democratic inclusion.<br />
The project is already a permanent part of Youth participation in sustainable development culture in Guimarães.
https://www.cm-guimaraes.pt/pages/1418?news_id=2965
4th edition of Eco Parliament:
https://www.labpaisagem.pt/alunos-de-7-agrupamentos-de-escolas-de-guima…
https://maisguimaraes.pt/eco-parlamento-com-alunos-de-sete-agrupamentos…
1st Parliament Session of the 4th edition:
https://www.cm-guimaraes.pt/pages/1418?news_id=4250&fbclid=IwAR1bYSqRpG…
https://correiodominho.pt/noticias/guimares-crianas-apresentam-contribu…
3th edition of EP:
https://www.facebook.com/Escola.Santos.Simoes/posts/1466457696815251
Access to some news clipping:
https://www.labpaisagem.pt/pegadas2017/ecoparlamento/
Page 130, Article Eco Parliament, II International Congress on Education, Environment and Development:
http://ambiente.ipleiria.pt/files/2017/04/Livro_Atas_IICIEAD_AF-1.pdf
Technical and work meetings at schools:
https://www.facebook.com/Escola.Santos.Simoes/photos/a.1423379337789754…
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Ricardo Nogueira Martins, Mr.