Institute Terra’s project "Sound in the Forest” was one of the chosen ones of the last bid launched by the Social Fund of the Unibanco Institute and will develop during the school year of 2009, a project of Musical Education for students from Aimorés between the ages of 12 to 16, involving shares of Environmental Education.
This project aims to promote social inclusion of young people, encourage the learning process and at the same time allow the formation of an environmental awareness focused on preservation and respect for nature.
The project will be developed at the Escola Estadual Frei Afonso Maria Jordá (EEFAMJ), one hundred 7th and 8th graders from that institution that show learning difficulty will benefit from this directly.
Through the diffusion of collective teaching of music in school, the project aims to collaborate in the development of students, allowing the building of new knowledge and the discovery of new opportunities for social inclusion.
"We do not have the intention to form professional musicians, but increasing the self-esteem of the students with learning difficulties, enhancing their potential as a transformer agent of society. Associated with this, will develop a work of environmental education to favor a greater awareness on the serious socio-environmental problems that affect the region”, explains Ricardo Rocha Salgado, superintendent of Institutional Relations of the Institute Terra.
At the end of the project a systematization of the method to be adopted will be made, aiming to replicate the technology developed in other social communities of Aimorés and neighboring counties as well as to demonstrate the importance of art and culture as tools for citizen training. At the same time, students will be encouraged to have the commitment and responsibility towards the development of self-sustainable environmental practices.
Gladys Nunes, manager of Education and Culture of the Institute Terra, notes that the project emphasizes implicit values in teaching music, among them the concentration, discipline, work in groups and sensitivity improvement, which acts as a reinforcement for the supplementation of school in a transverse way.
The music classes are extra-classes and will be taught twice a week in dependencies of the Institute Terra - both in film-Terra Theater, which has capacity for 180 people, as well as outdoors.
On the environment subject the student is invited to experience a greater contact with the environment, through courses and workshops will be taught by professionals in the area and that will help to enrich their understanding and responsibility on 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 Institute Terra, which was created to disseminate the technologies developed, promote reflection on the current development model and reinforce agents of transformation towards sustainable development.
CERA’s activities began in February 2002 and, until now has promoted courses and training for more than 17 thousand people, from 72 different municipalities of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo.
