Outdoor Education Based on the Earth Charter, in Argentina

The group Argentina People and Nature has been working with rural and local schools from the botanic garden Dr. Miquel J Culaciati, an oasis in the province of Córdoba.

 

They have created a program for outdoor education based on the Earth Charter. Support comes from Botanic Gardens Conservation International and a scientific team from the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires, who are working from a laboratory annexed to the Botanic Garden. The objective is to reforest a fire-damaged area with native tree and shrub species, and to do it in a way that can be replicated in other damaged areas.

 

By using the Earth Charter they provide meaningful values, locally, regionally and nationally. The new program complements school curricula at the kindergarten, elementary and high school levels, and it facilitates college-level education in environmental sciences, and provides information to the general public.

 

Helene Vilbert, a Coordinator for the Argentina People and Nature Foundation, will be presenting this work to a Botanic Gardens Conservation International Congress in England this September—and the Earth Charter is the banner of her presentation.

 

The project began in 1989, and in 2000 the State Botanical Garden of the University of Georgia, together with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean studies, signed an agreement to create the Latin American Ethnobotanical Sister Garden Network.

 

The group has also spoken about the Earth Charter to an audience of more than 95,000 at a recent fair called Expochacra ( www.expochacra.org ), and handed out hundreds of copies of the Charter. The group has created a magazine for primary school children called Verde y Algo Mas, which includes much discussion of the Earth Charter.

 

To see those and other related materials, please visit the website: http://www.argentinapeopleandnature.org