Environmental Education Program: emancipatory education to generate a community engaged in its own socio-environmental development

The Environmental Education Program of the Mining Complex of the Minas-Rio System, by Anglo American, aims to implement actions for the social awareness of those directly impacted by the enterprise. In this way, it seeks to contribute so that these people can have an effective role in improving the environmental and life quality of the region.

To increase the awareness of those affected, methodologies were developed to promote an emancipatory education, capable of guaranteeing its autonomy in transforming the local socio-environmental reality. Divided into 4 different fronts, the work with the communities was able to invest in training on:

• Social Organization;
• Water Resources;
• Sanitation;
• Income Generation;
• Quality of life and leisure;
• Cultural identity.

From the training, it was possible to implement more collaborative and horizontal practices, creating and strengthening community associations for further development of social organization with the protagonism of communities.

Leonardo Barbosa, Synergia’s project coordinator, highlights the importance of informing and fostering in the communities the notion of citizen practices and the awareness that the participation of each one is fundamental for the conservation of the environment: “The PEA CMD adds an extremely important knowledge for people to understand the dynamics of the environment in relation to the water issue, the economy and small or large agriculture. The construction of knowledge and skills capable of making the subject have a less degrading relationship with the environment is based on theoretical and practical knowledge about him, so that people can choose what is more viable in terms of environmental quality of their territory.”

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