Honduran kids solve climate crisis in high-energy school program

The NDF-funded education pilot project on climate change for indigenous school children in Honduras has just completed, showing significantly better-than-expected results.

The project, known as “Save The Planet Initiative” is part of an ongoing NDF-sponsored Indigenous Peoples, Renewable Energy and Climate Change Program in Honduras and was funded with a USD 740,000 grant from NDF, managed by the IDB, and rolled out locally by the Honduran NGO, FEREMA.

Carolina Maduro, Executive Secretary at FEREMA, recalls: “Our initial plan was to roll out in only 150 schools, but by the end of the two years we had reached 169 schools. Once we got underway, schools started calling us, asking to be part of the project.”

The team found ways to include additional schools while still keeping within budget. As a result, an initially targeted 11,000 students rose to a total 20,853 school children and their communities in 51 municipalities, who were positively impacted by the program.

Maduro, who was active at the frontlines at various stages of the project implementation, describes the design of the curriculum as unique in that it goes beyond classroom learning, motivating students to use their own creativity and energy to tackle environmental problems in their own schools and neighbourhoods.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation were the overarching themes of the curriculum’s five teaching modules, which introduced topics such as water conservation, renewable energy, landscape protection, waste management and planting edible school herb gardens.

Original source: NDF
Published on 07 August 2019