Agrupamento de Escolas de Valongo

ECOTOPIA FOR KIDS

Escola N.S. Perpétuo Socorro

Escola S. Clara de Resende

Escola S. Alexandre Herculano

Agrupamento de Escolas de Valongo

Conference cycle in Serralves

Last session

On the ninth of May, our collaborative project with the High School of Valongo “A world without plastics” was presented at the international conference Uma Nova Utopia Europeia at the Serralves Museum of Modern Art in Porto. As a part of our larger program “Valongo, Cidade Utópica”, students of our partner school presented creative talks on plastic pollution and the use of plastic items more generally. Their talks were preceded by a short movie created by our team that was composed of clips from a plogging event in Valongo framed by short notes about the impact of global plastic pollution. Not only was the original event a remarkable success, bringing together out trainees and almost 100 students for feasible anti-pollution activism, but the cinematic recollection offered a fresh interlude into the academic contributions of the international presenters.

Plogging in Serra de Valongo

On Friday 3rd of May 2019, we took an active part in cleaning the environment with an event called „Plogging“. Plogging is a combination of the words jogging + plockaupp which basically means “picking up the trash while jogging through the nature“. The destination we chose was Serra de Valongo park because it`s noted to have some rubbish in the area. The team was made of about 100 students from the 8th to 12th grade in the Secondary school of Valongo. The event took three hours and resulted in the collection of nine bags full of trash, mostly plastic. This event showed how much trash can be collected in an area of 5km, exemplifying the need of action and spreading awerness of environmental sustaintability.

WORKSHOP

Ecological footprint; how many planets do we need if everybody lives like you?

On the 1st of April, the Utopia 500 team presented a workshop at the “Escola Básica do Campo”, titled: “Ecological footprint; how many planets do we need if everybody lives like you?”. The same workshop took place in "Escola Secundária de Valongo" on the 3rd of May, followed by a plogging event in Serra de Valongo.

The aim of our workshop -addressed to 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th grade students- was to increase student´ awareness about the impact that humans’ activities have on the environment, giving them some suggestions to reduce their personal impact and become “greener”. At the same time, we tried to share the idea that if we need to achieve sustainability, we have to be more active as citizens. It is not too late, we can still help our wonderful planet.

The presentation included some theoretical explanation regarding the notion of ecological footprint, carbon footprint, climate change and global warming; interactive activities such as the ecological footprint calculator and a quiz-game and discussions about some consequences that our daily activities have on the environment.