EB 2,3 de Gueifães is a middle school with 85 teachers and 721 students which belongs to Maia´s Cluster of Schools. Located in Gueifães, a village between the cities of Maia and Oporto, the school is now under renovation.
The Nemesis project “Saving Water” is being developed by a 7th grade class with 28 students. The class identified the problem in an OPERA activity, based on a previous analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Droughts are common in Portugal. However, its frequency and intensity have increased in the last decades. This year the drought is most severe, especially in the interior and in the south of the country.
Until now, two Co-creation labs have already taken place, gathering together students, teachers, parents, municipality and social innovators.
In the first co-creation lab the social innovators introduced themselves and shared the story of their journey through social innovation. Students presented the problem they identified and finally, in small groups, gathering different actors and using a participatory methodology – Empathy map – everyone reflected about a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYnRBlTSZ0 in a collaborative way.
The second co-creation lab took place exactly one month later. In the citizenship classes, the students had already started, in small groups, to design some possible projects about water waste. In the co-creation lab, with the help of the adults and mainly of the young social innovators, they organized their ideas into more sustainable projects using project-based learning methodology.
At the moment different groups of students are investigating things like water consumption and water waste in the school; water recycling and reuse technologies and are organizing campaigns about this issue as well as recycling clothes and growing an organic garden. All in the name of water saving.
Finally, another important aspect of this project is the chance to work with students from the other side of the world. The Portuguese students are exchanging ideas with their colleagues from the Portuguese School in Dili, East Timor. These have shared a small video about water waste in their country and now the Portuguese students are going to write an article about their project and it’s going to be published in the magazine of the Portuguese School in Dili.
The teachers: Ana Carvalho and Raquel Sarmento