Last October, on the occasion of the delegates and eco-delegates seminar of Argentona’s high school, the Sustainability by Education team was invited to carry out its opening, which consisted on a two-hour workshop where we talked about our consumption habits and we focused on the modification of tiny aspects that may generate a huge impact.
Snapshot of the ongoing workshop, with Eloi introducing the Sustainability by Education team, formed that day by Júlia, Carla and himself.
The delegates and eco-delegates seminar of Argentona’s high school consists on several dissemination sessions where the student’s representatives from each class learn various aspects related to sustainability and ecology, which they will have to transmit to their fellow students once back to class. This event was held in El Saló de Pedra, a conference room property of Argentona’s city council.
Considering that this high school had 5 classes per each age range, 6 age levels and 2 representatives per class, our audience was comprised of – make the math! – 60 students, with ages ranging from 12 to 17 years old. That aspect represented a huge challenge for the Sustainability by Education team, since on the one hand, we did want to transmit our message making it as simple as possible for the younger ones, but on the other hand, we did not want the older students to fall asleep!
In order to achieve such an ambitious goal, we opted for the use of visual and colourful styles in our slides along with relevant figures and results from prestigious studies. That way, with a traffic light-like style, our youngest audience was able to easily identify those consumption habits generating the most and the least environmental impact, and with the outcome of relevant research studies, we kept the attention of the older ones, who were mature enough to start demanding the What and Why of things.
As always, we started with the definition of several aspects crucial for understanding the meaning of the workshop, such as sustainability and the layers which is comprised, of or what does a sustainable development mean. For that purpose, we implemented a new tool, which we nicknamed as The Sustainability Pyramid, an object made of recycled cardboard boxes which was designed by Carla, one of our brand-new collaborators!
The Sustainability Pyramid was one of the main attractives of the event, since a few volunteers had to « interact » with it.
Once into context, we talked about our consumption habits, from the moment we wake up to the moment we go back to sleep, and how tiny modifications may play a huge impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the use of resources.
To conclude the workshop, we carried out a discussion activity, where students had to solve a real-life problem (e.g. the rise of pollution in cities) by exposing their own ideas and reaching a common consensus. Great ideas came up for the solving of the considered issue, which we really hope the city council will consider in a near future!!
Finally, we want to thank Institut d’Argentona, and specially Mercè, for making this workshop possible, as well as Carla for joining us in her first workshop, which we hope is the first of many!
P.S.: you can listen to Radio Argentona’s podcast talking about the workshop in their news section! http://argentona.cat/fitxa.php?id=44589 (minute 7:41 onwards).