RegenÜrate se expande a Jordania
Zouheir
Jan 18, 2021
RegenÜrate y King's Academy se unieron para ofrecer un curso de educación regenerativa.
In January, regenÜrate and King’s Academy teamed up to offer a regenerative education course to students of the Middle School. The Global Goal we explored was 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. For each Global Goal, the world’s leaders have set forth indicators and targets to track change and progress. At regenÜrate, we create our activity-based and project learning educational services using these indicators, among our other pillars, to train students in regenerative transformation. The main focus of the training was indicator 6.3: “Improve water quality, wastewater treatment, and safe reuse. By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.”
Students challenged themselves over two weeks to imagine, design, and prototype their own projects to promote regenerative change in Jordan.
The Missions we explored comprised a variety of topics regarding water use and wastewater management. Students engaged questions and realities such as:
The top polluting industries’ impact on the water cycle.
Where our water comes from and what are the responsibilities of healthy aqueduct systems.
How our domestic consumption habits can affect waterways.
Innovating water filters for grey water management at home.
Integrating pathogenic bacteria management into water filtration systems.
We were amazed by students’ independent projects. Some of their ideas included:
Creating comedic videos to transform water consumption habits.
A 50-page business plan, pitch deck, and website for a grey water management company.
Launching jewelry lines made from plastic in the ocean.
Creating water inclusion programs for excluded populations.
Using banana leaves and peels to make paper.
Museum curation for water awareness.
Designing permaculture food forests that also sequester water into the ground and serve eco-tourism sites.
Throughout the course, the students completed our reflection forms where we assess a base knowledge level, process of learning, key life skills, emotional intelligence, and ability to manifest the Global Goal indicator. Here are some of the results from our journey with the Middle School Students.
Process of Learning
Regarding to the global water crisis we are living in, we saw a steep increase in student’s inspiration to drive change.
Initially
of students felt inspired to drive change-
By Mission 3 this increased to
and by the end of the course
showed motivation supported with concrete actions.
Initially, there was a weak ability of students to identify specifically where their water came from and few students were able to link their faucets to an ecosystem. That changed throughout the course as the majority of students were able to identify that their water (about 60% of Jordan’s supply) is extracted from groundwater sources.
Key Skills
said skills and abilities learned included commitment, responsibility, time management skills, leadership, research, and confidence.
Gave combined answers regarding professional and personal skills when asked the abilities needed to become a water steward. These skills and characteristics included thinking outside the box, care, teaching, raising awareness, compassion, kindness, gratitude, and public speaking.
Learned something about themselves or learned something surprising such as passion for the environment, ability to build and create, writing stories and research, cooking abilities, polluting habits and the possibility to drive change.
“I discovered that I really care and love the environment and I realized that I have a passion for saving our ecosystems.”
“I discovered many new things about myself, such as my ability to build and map out creatively.”
“I am a hard worker, how I rely on myself, and how great of a cook I am.”
Emotional Intelligence
Initially
of students skipped these questions.
Throughout the Missions
proposed action to ensure water justice for all through “demand[ing] corporate and government action, research on water sources, aqueducts extracting less than the limit, volunteer teams, relocation of species.”
Initially
were able to connect with other beings’ feelings towards water.
By the end of the course
of the students showed an increase in empathy, even those that answered they were stressed, anxious and frustrated, shared on their reflections that they were able to transform these feelings through the sense of novelty and opportunity, which finally led to a sense of achievement, satisfaction and joy.
Manifesting the Global Goal indicator
Gave ideas and expressed commitment to “Improve water quality, wastewater treatment, and safe reuse.”
Gave concrete engineering proposals. A few of the answers also included legislation and awareness campaigns.
Presented concrete ideas for water treatment besides filters.
We are humbled by students’ overall experience, with 85% claiming that they want to see more of this type of education at King's! By combining our educational forces, we see potential for connecting deeper to the reality we are living, strengthening our emotional intelligence, developing skills for the workplace and higher education, and building trust in hands-on innovation. We are looking forward to working with the Middle School staff to introduce more regenerative education options at King’s for the fall semester. Further, we are excited to have hired our first intern from King’s for the winter semester, with more internships in the planning for the summer!
