A true school inside RPPN Fazenda Bulcão – Instituto Terra, the Advanced Center to the Environment Recovery and sustainable rural development, better known as CA, exceed the traditional molds of the the education system and adopts the Ecoeducation as method in the Agro-Environment Course to the Technique Level, that is directed to the new graduated agro technicians.
The goal is to give a specialization in the recovery of the degraded areas, in agro ecology and in the sustainable development, changing the Agro Technicians into agents of Sustainable Rural Development.
It wants to train professionals with an ethical sense of duty with the ecology and that serves a specialized labor in this area to the Brazilian market at the same time.
The investment in the vocational training of agro technicians guided to conservation and recovery of the environment of Mata Atlantica wants to reach a really specific public of the medium region of Rio Doce - the agriculturists, companies and Governments. It is one of the ways that allows the Instituto Terra to spread the obtained knowledge about how to recovery the Mata Atlantica, motivating the adoption of sustainable and productives actions in the region.
How it Works
The course works as a boarding school and the students are put up in the Advanced Center accommodations. They also receive food, clothes and monthly financial help.
The syllabus includes the theoretical and practical graduation in the recovery of degraded areas, the environment restoration, the sustainable utilization of the natural resources, to value of the environment and to suggest alternative techniques in the producing and financial administration of rural properties.
Ten students entry the course yearly and it last two years – the activities started in February, 2005.
The course is kept by the support of the Government of Asturias, in Spain.
The process of selection
The Advanced Center counts yearly with twenty students in vocational training. The selection works following the stages below
Starting with the contacts realized by the CA team, the AgroTechnical Schools and Família Agrícola Schools established in the municipalities that are part of Bacia do Rio Doce, in the states of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo, they make a pre-selection into its students and each of them sends six applicants every year. As the time goes by, the Instituto Terra has realized a growing interesting with the Course through the receive of graduated applicants of the neighbors states.
The applicants are evaluated by theoretical tests and interviews. At the end, ten of them are chosen to start the Course.
These ten selected students are integrated with the other ten that are already in the second year of the Course to form only one class. It happens because the syllabus establishes a practical and individualized formation.
During the course, the students have the opportunity to participate of practical experiences, coming with the activities of the recovery of the degraded area in Fazenda Bulcao – nursery of native species of Mata Atlantica, garden, plantation, how to treat the cultures and others. At the same time, each technique is showed and analyzed specifically. In this way, in not much time, the students acquires a general vision of all stages of a environment recovery – since the catch of the seeds, the sower, the plant development until the care with the adults plants. The works happen according each time of the year and correspond of 67% of the Course activities. The 33% are dedicated to the theoretical part and the individual or small groups’ researches.
Besides the activities of RPPN Fazenda Bulcao, the students are prepared to draw up, implement, to come with, evaluate and to give evidences of projects in the environment and the sustainable rural development. To do this, they come with the Instituto Terra’s activities with its partners, the city halls, the governments organs, the not-government organs and mainly, together the rural producers of the region. The graduation process ends with a supervised training of the student, with the duration of 444 hours.
