To enlarge the chances of social inclusion of students with learning disabilities through music and environmental education: this is the challenge of Project ‘Sound in the Forest’, that the Instituto Terra, with the support from the Instituto Unibanco, will develop over the year 2009 involving 100 students of 7th and 8th grades of the State School Frei Afonso Maria Jordá, located in the municipality of Aimorés, in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
The project started in April, 2009 with workshops that were conducted with participating students, involving issues related to the music initiation and “Principles for the Protection of Life”. The workshops and other activities will be realized in the installations of Terra Cine-Theatre located in the headquarters of Instituto Terra.
The project "Sound in the Forest” was one of the chosen by the last bid launched by the Social Fund of the Instituto Unibanco and aims to promote social inclusion of young people, encourage the learning process as well as allow the formation of an environmental awareness focused on preservation and respect for nature.
"We do not have the intention to form professional musicians, but to increase the student`s self-esteem, enhancing their potential as a transformer agent of the society. Associated with this, will be developed a work of environmental education to favor a greater awareness about the serious socio-environmental problems that affect the region”, explains Ricardo Rocha Salgado, Institutional Relations superintendent of the Institute Terra.
Gladys Nunes, Education and Culture manager of the Instituto Terra, notes that the project emphasizes implicit values in teaching music, like the concentration, discipline, work in groups and sensitivity improvement, which acts as a reinforcement for the complementary school. At the same time, students will be encouraged to have the commitment and responsability with the development of self-sustainable environmental practices.
The music classes will be taught three times a week in dependencies of the Instituto Terra Cine-Theatre, which has capacity for 180 people, as well as outdoors.
On the environment subject the student will be invited to experience a greater contact with the environment, through courses and workshops that will be taught by enabled professionals and that will help to enrich their understanding and responsibility over the major issues surrounding the environmental degradation that affects the region of Aimorés and other cities in the Rio Doce Valley.
The project will be coordinated by the Educational Center for Environment Recovery (CERA) of the Instituto Terra, which was created to disseminate the technologies developed, promote reflection on the current development model and potential agents of transformation in direction of the sustainable development.
CERA’s activities began in February, 2002 and until now has promoted events, courses and training for 40 thousand people, from 167 different municipalities of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro.
