With the Advanced Center, innovative program that enables newly graduated agricultural students in the conservation and environmental recovery area,
the Terra Institute received the award in Science and Human Resources Training category
In the year that it celebrates ten years of foundation, the Terra Institute receives an important recognition for its work in favor of preserving the Atlantic Forest in the Doce River region, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Its Advanced Center for Environmental Rehabilitation and Sustainable Rural Development program has just conquered the Ford Motor Company Award for Environmental Conservation, today considered one of the most important awards in the environmental area in Brazil.
The prize, which is in its 13th edition, is an initiative by Ford in partnership with Conservation International (CI-Brazil) and this year counted with 138 enrolled in the five categories that it composes - Individual Achievement, Business in Conservation, Science and Human Resources Training, Environment in Schools and Supplier.
Terra’s Institute Advanced Center won in the category "Science and Human Resources Training", receiving a trophy and prize valued at R$ 20 thousand (Twenty Thousand Reais). The delivery ceremony of the prize happened in Bahia, on the evening of the day on November 25, during a convention of the assembly, where the Earth Institute was represented by its Superintendent of Institutional Relations, Ricardo Salgado Rocha.
According to the committee judges, the project of the Terra Institute was elected the best among the registered due to the involvement with the community and, above all, the responsible proposal to make the knowledge accessible to the field works, which often have no access to formal study. In addition, the Center also contributes to the social, as a possible improvement of quality of life for many young people in the region that have no educational and professional prospects.
The Ford Prize for Environmental Conservation has been awarded since 1996 and over the thirteen years it has honored 60 individuals and organizations dedicated to environmental causes, totaling approximately 1.7 thousand registered projects, from all regions of Brazil.
The program that guaranteed the prize to the Terra Institute, the Advanced Center, is one of the pillars of the Terra Institute's educational strategy to promote sustainable development in the Middle Rio Doce region, involving municipalities of the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo.
Adopting an innovative curriculum, the Advanced Center prepares a new professional with experience and socio conscience, to act as an agro-environmental technician (technical level) and to assist the family farmers.
Its mission is to fill a gap in the Brazilian environmental education, in which the research and the generation of knowledge is intense in institutions of higher education, but few in high school, from which come the professionals who directly support small rural producers and work on giving organizations that are maintained by public power daily technical support, rural cooperatives and organizations.
The Advanced Center
A real "school" within the RPPN Bulcão Farm, home of the Terra Institute in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, the Advanced Center for Environmental Restoration and Sustainable Rural Development explores the traditional way of educational institutions and embraces the Eco-pedagogy as a methodology in the Agro-Environmental Post-Technical Level Course, which is dedicated to newly formed agricultural, environmental and forestry experts.
With the investment in agricultural technicians training geared to conservation and environmental recovery of the Atlantic Forest, the Terra Institute aims to achieve a very specific audience in the region of the Middle Rio Doce: small properties and family farmers. This is one of the means for the Terra Institute to replicate the knowledge gained in the recovery of the Atlantic Forest, encouraging the adoption of sustainable production practices in the region.
The Advanced Center was inaugurated in August 2004 and activities started in February 2005. The construction of students housing was done with the resources from Florindon Foundation (Switzerland), through the Philips in Brazil. The development of the educational curriculum was sponsored by the International Finance Corporation - IFC. Currently, the Advanced Center is maintained with the support of the Government of the Principality of Asturias, Spain.
Click her to find out more about the Advanced Center.
