We encourage Green Mapmaking, and its research and communications methodology, to help youth express their concerns and hopes for the local environment to their peers, to older community members, and to policy-makers.
Our “Mapas Verdes Juveniles” focus on natural resource conservation, greener, more culturally rich daily lives for Pereira's residents, pollution problems, and justice issues in a direct, pragmatic way.
Fundacion GeoVida is responsible for Green Map training and workshops, and Fundacio GeoVida provides students with expert information and experiential environmental activities related to the sites and situations they are charting. This pilot project provides tools and material resources to one rural and two urban public schools in the Pereira area. Now we are planning to plant this seed in the traditional coffee growing ecoregion.
Our youth participants and their families come from low-income communities. The ages of the participating students in the three public schools range from 7 to 17 years old. This project directly involves more than 150 students with the leadership and assistance of more than 20 Fundación GeoVida mentors, teachers, volunteers, and community members.
We expect journalist, policymakers, and more than 15,000 people in the surrounding community to benefit from their use of the resulting Green Maps. We also expect that the trained staff will be able to replicate our experiences in other communities so our outcomes will inspire other low-income and/or Spanish speaking communities worldwide.
This municipality is located in the coffee growing region of Risaralda in a small valley that descends from a part of the western Andes mountain chain. It has amazing and diverse natural and cultural resources, which are ready to be discovered and environmental problems to be addressed. Pereira has developed an important industrial and commercial core and is facing rapid urban development, which threatens the open and public spaces, pollutes the air, pollutes bodies of water, creates unsustainable land-use practices, etc.
With Green Mapmaking, children are achieving a better understanding and appreciation of the places where they live. Along the way they are becoming engaged in sustainable agriculture, food security, reforestation, hydroponics, recycling and waste management, eco-literacy, social responsibility, critical assessment, design and communications, which are all topics that are part of the lesson plan. Using Green Map System’s adaptable youth resources, a lesson plan that fits the age groups and overall pedagogical needs was tailored for each school with Fundación GeoVida’s involvement.
Green Map System provided Mentor and Teacher Toolkits (printed materials, Green Map Resource Guide and archive materials, multimedia CDs, USB drive, compasses, a selection of Green Maps, display materials including Icon balloons, etc.). Freshly translated, with the Captain Planet Foundation’s support, teachers’ needs have been supported, and teachers have been encouraged to develop new resources that will be shared back with future youth Mapmakers around the globe. (You can find these youth resources in Spanish in the GMS' Tool Center).
Other projected outcomes
- Green Map Murals and printed Green Maps (shared online) with reforestation, recycling, and other themes. We expect to publish both sketch and more polished maps of different scales that reflecting student findings and concerns. Special events will promote the maps in the Pereira area too.
- This project will also encourage the adoption of a new environmental curriculum in a contextual way.
Green Mapmaking is an interactive process from the planning stage on. There are valuable lessons to learn each step of the way. Research, design, getting the map done, and extending and reporting on the outcomes are all part of the process. This process, along with the energy of youth mapmakers, will create a sense of place, facilitate dialogue, and transform realities in the way children view of the environment.
Educators in Colombia are gaining valuable skills and are using these skills to help children identify environmental assets and liabilities in their communities as well as and put global environmental problems into a solution-oriented local scale. Children are connecting the natural and the built environment with their school's environment. They are emphasizing our shared responsibility to protect the environment as well as the importance of conservation and rational resources use in the long-term.
Finally, the Green Maps, the tangible products of this process, will be a long-lasting contribution and a message of inspiration on different levels: the government and policy makers will hear and see the youth demands; the children involved in this project will become Youth Mentors and will pass on their knowledge and methodologies locally; and other communities around the planet will be motivated to develop more projects like this. Together, we are educating youth, empowering and involving communities, and investing in the future of the next generations.
