Writing
The Association for Rural Development of Lanzarote (ADERLAN) launches for the school year 2005-2006 in the centers of Infant and Primary Education, the project "Education for Sustainable Development: Bases for a School Agenda 21", where an environmental education program is developed that has as fundamental axes the knowledge and appreciation of the Biosphere Reserve and its sustainable development.
This project is co-financed by the General Directorate of Educational Promotion and the Social Work of La Caja de Canarias.
"Education for Sustainable Development: Bases for a School Agenda 21", is a continuation of the projects "Know and Value your Natural and Cultural Resources" and "Knowing Our Island", which ADERLAN executed in previous years, achieving great acceptance in educational centers, in order to reach those centers that could not participate in previous years.
Biosphere Reserve
This new project starts from the need that society has to know, analyze and reflect on the reality of an Island Biosphere Reserve. The role of the local population is decisive, since they are the ones who manage and use this space.
Therefore, knowledge must be transmitted so that each individual acquires the necessary guidelines that allow them to develop a behavior that helps to reduce the degradation of the environment, to value it, to seek solutions and alternatives to stop the permanent deterioration to which Lanzarote is subjected and ultimately achieve a sustainable development among all, thus implementing the bases that will facilitate the construction of School Agendas 21.
These agendas are instruments planned at the municipal level to collaborate and help educational centers in the design and execution of work plans related to the environment that are integrated into the study plans.
Aderlan firmly believes that the best way for this knowledge and behavior patterns to become part of this plural society is through the educational centers of infant and primary school, directing them to minors who begin to share ideas and to be critical of what surrounds them, to ensure a better quality of life for both this and future generations.
Environmental education workshops
The main pillars of the project are the environmental education workshops, related to topics as important as: The Culture of Water in Lanzarote, Traditional Architecture, Recycling, Traditions, Economy, etc.
These will be executed in different C.E.I.P. of Arrecife, as well as in unitary education centers located throughout the Island. Unlike in previous projects, these workshops will be continuous in time, developing one workshop a week, with the aim of avoiding sporadic interventions and giving it a character of continuity, facilitating the assimilation of contents to the students.
Once the Workshops have been executed, these will be complemented with routes or educational outings to leisure and interpretation places where the students have the opportunity to visualize in situ the contents addressed in the classroom and consolidate their learning.
Didactic notebook
Another of the fundamental sections of the Project is the realization of a didactic notebook, which is being elaborated at this moment by the technical team of ADERLAN. For this, the curriculum prefixed for the area of knowledge of the environment of the third cycle of primary school has been taken as a reference axis, selecting those contents that are most directly related to Environmental Education and that have been contextualized in the island of Lanzarote.
The notebook is an innovative tool, based on an eminently practical and playful methodology, where capacities such as critical spirit, decision making, autonomy... are promoted. In short, what the notebook intends is: "to make known the natural, cultural and economic environment of the Island, as well as to educate in values."
It presents a fun design adapted to the maturity level of the students, with a very accessible language that encourages interaction between the students and the notebook.
It will be designed in paper support that constitutes a tool of easy consultation and handling when required. It supposes an extension and complementation of the bibliographical and didactic bases existing in the C.E.I.P.
