Socio-environmental Responsibility
Presentation
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro (JBRJ) understands that socio-environmental responsibility is a permanent posture, the basis of human and professional activity. With a transformative approach, the Socio-environmental Responsibility Center (CRS) seeks a differentiated form of relationship between the different actors of society and the environment in which they are inserted.
The Social and Environmental Responsibility Center qualifies and promotes the social and professional inclusion of young people aged 15 to 18, through education and training for work, developing intellectual, cultural, social and environmental skills. The goal is to form more aware and prepared citizens for the job market and for life. In its 30 years of existence, starting in 1989, more than 4,000 young people have already been attended to.
The CRS team is made up of technicians from the Botanical Garden Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro, educators and external instructors - service providers with diversified backgrounds, offering transversal work, including psycho-pedagogical accompaniment.
About CRS
CRS Mission, Vision and Values
Education and Work Program
Florescer Project
High School Scientific Initiation Project
Florescer University Project
Graduates Follow-up Project
Actions for Society Program
Partnerships
Collaborate with CRS
About CRS
The concept of Socio-environmental Responsibility inextricably involves three pillars: social, economic, and environmental. This notion proposes a management vision guided by an ethical and transparent relationship with all the publics it relates to, and is capable of creating goals that drive the sustainable development of society, preserving environmental and cultural resources for future generations, respecting diversity and promoting the reduction of social inequalities.
The activities of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro in the social sphere began on June 21, 1869 with the inauguration of the "Asilo Agrícola da Fazenda Normal" (Agricultural Asylum of the Normal Farm), a school whose commitment was to professionalize orphans coming from the Santa Casa de Misericórdia as apprentices in agricultural techniques. The Asylum worked until the early years of the Republic, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works was extinguished.
Following the historical vocation of the Botanical Garden in the field of professional training for the socially excluded, on October 29, 1989 another stage of this trajectory began, with the implementation and execution of the Project called Extramuros: Street Children/Gardening. The project was aimed at young people and adults of both sexes, between 14 and 21 years old, with the objective of meeting the growing demand of the market for specialized labor in green area maintenance and making possible the insertion of the surrounding communities in the activities of the Botanical Garden.
After a restructuring of the work done in the initial project, the Education and Work Program was created in 1995, aiming to face four major challenges: 1) develop an innovative educational proposal capable of stimulating skills, personal qualities, and ethical values; 2) encourage, through new methodologies, productivity, initiative, and learning with autonomy; 3) promote in young people the ability to manage their own personal and professional development; and 4) train citizens.
Currently, the Education and Work Program continues to work with the same objectives and, together with the Actions for Society Program, congregate the actions and commitments of the CRS of the Botafogo Botafogo regarding social, cultural, scientific and environmental issues for the formation of human resources.
CRS Mission, Vision and Values
Mission
To promote the formation of citizens through education, professionalization, and respect for the environment.
Vision
To be a reference in Brazil in the formation of citizens, in the promotion of their insertion in the labor market and in the production and diffusion of knowledge in socio-environmental education.
Values
- Education as a means to transform the individual and society;
- Respect for institutions, human beings and the environment;
- Trust;
- Ethics and transparency
- Diversity;
- Gender equality;
- Innovation.
Education and Work Program
The Education and Work Program is aligned with the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, with the new Guidelines and Bases for Education and with the challenges launched by Unesco for Education in the 21st Century, as well as the Global Agenda 21, in its articles 3, 25 and 36. Using active and integrative educational methodologies in the transformation of thoughts, actions and/or feelings, the Program builds forms of democratic social intervention with its members.
The Program operates according to the following precepts: environmental compliance - it considers risks and impacts of its actions on the environment, putting the CRS in harmony with nature; social responsibility - it influences and impacts the community in which it is inserted, developing actions that contribute to its growth; and quality in actions - efficiency in its training with recognition by society and significant results in the participants' families.
The methodology developed in the Education and Work Program's courses is based on the theoretical precepts of Piaget's psychogenetics, Ausubel's theory of significant learning, Jung's theory, and Freire's pedagogy. These theoretical bases give support to the development of the Curricular Conceptual Matrix anchored in the participant's pre-existing knowledge. Being a participative, dynamic, and multidisciplinary method, the methodology is supported by the four pillars of education recognized by UNESCO: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together/with others, and learning to be.
The Education and Work Program houses, among several projects, the Florescer Project, the Florescer University Project, and the Scientific Initiation in High School Project.
Florescer Project
The Florescer Project provides assistance and professional training to young people between 15 and 18 years old, promoting the rescue of the social bonds of this population in situations of risk and socioeconomic vulnerability through education, culture, and work, aiming at the responsible exercise of citizenship and the preservation of the environment. It offers the following training courses: Gardening with Emphasis on Agroecology, Parataxonomy and Management of Biological Collections, Administrative Assistant with Emphasis on Sustainability, and Monitor in Spaces of Science and Culture, besides Inclusive Education activities (Sensorial Garden).
The Socio-environmental Responsibility Center complements formal education by strengthening the skills, capacities, and virtues of these apprentices, such as autonomy, creativity, negotiation, initiative, interlocution, responsibility, and solidarity, as it believes in the importance of social values for the formation of adults with integrity and security.
The training courses of the Florescer Project last up to two years and are composed of three phases:
Phase 1 is common to those who join the Project, lasts for one semester and in it the thematic subjects related to citizenship, self-esteem, sociability and expansion of the cultural universe are worked on.
Phase 2 also takes place in one semester and is dedicated, besides what was previously mentioned, to the development of specific training skills selected considering the student's aptitude, introducing concepts and values of professional ethics and related to insertion in the job market.
Phase 3 is the practical experience and its goal is to enhance learning in a work environment, providing the youth with the development of skills such as self-management, hetero-management and co-management, that is, learning to better deal with their potential and limitations, coordinating the work of other people and acting together with other youth and adults in achieving common goals. In this way, the practical experience provides for the personal development of the learners who have completed the training in their respective areas in Phase 2, as well as the development of qualities that enable them to enter, remain in, and ascend in the world of work.
Criteria
The selection criteria for joining the Project are: being between 15 and 18 years old; being enrolled in public schools between the 9th grade of elementary school and high school; and having a family income of less than two minimum wages.
Benefits
The benefits include an educational scholarship, uniform, breakfast or afternoon snack (depending on the shift) and lunch from Monday to Friday, as well as extra activities such as lectures, outings, cultural events, participation in fairs and conferences, and interface with international projects.
Training in Science and Culture Space Monitoring
The course Science and Culture Spaces Monitor trains and capacitates professionals to act in the interface society/environment, orienting and stimulating about the importance of preservation of natural resources, citizens' rights, culture and ethics.
Objectives: To provide a consistent vision of good practices, concepts and benefits of the role of Science and Culture Space Monitor, encompassing the ability to promote, act and intercede on social issues interconnected or associated with environmental ones and in harmony with the pertinent legislation.
Training in Parataxonomy and Management of Biological Collections
The Parataxonomy and Biological Collection Management course was implemented with the objective of preparing professionals who are able to develop activities for the preparation, maintenance and public monitoring of scientific collections. It offers training and formation of young people in Botany knowledge, with emphasis in Taxonomy and Systematics, approaching techniques of herborization, scientific collections, history and reception techniques for public attendance, among others.
Objective: To provide basic knowledge of Parataxonomy and techniques related to the routine of a Herbarium, in addition to contributing with basic knowledge for the implementation of visitor service activities, collection, identification, preparation and conservation of living plants living plants or in scientific collections.
High School Scientific Initiation Project
The High School Scientific Initiation Project began in 2018, a year in which five young people started to develop socio-environmental research activities as a back-to-school activity. The goal of this project is to awaken the scientific vocation of students still in high school, in order to strengthen processes that disseminate scientific knowledge among young people to develop attitudes, skills and values necessary for scientific and technological education and biodiversity research, in addition to popularizing scientific knowledge to society. Currently, through institutional partnerships between JBRJ and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), about 50 young people participate in this Project.
Florescer University Project
The Florescer University Project was born in 2020 with the purpose of continuing the education of students from the Florescer Project after training in the various areas of technical expertise included in their training courses. By seeking to stimulate the interest of students to continue their education and to contribute to the entry and permanence of these young people in Higher Education courses, the project is aligned with the vocation of the CRS and the JBRJ for inclusive, participative and socio-environmental education.
Graduates Follow-up Project
The Education and Work Program, recognizing the importance of following up the professional activities of its graduates, has developed a specific space for communicating with them, in order to evaluate and improve their academic actions and strengthen their social commitment.
In this way, the Egresses Follow-up Project constitutes an action that seeks to recognize possible difficulties and identify the limiting elements of the access of the egresses to the job market, to analyze the compatibility between the occupation exercised and their graduation course and to identify the satisfaction index of the professionals graduated by the Institution. Besides this, the Project also seeks to recognize the degree of compatibility between their training and the demands of society and the world of work, the expectations of the egresses in regards to continued professional and technological training and to add suggestions, since the academic experience of the student, during the time of their training and their experience in their professional life, becomes a source of information for the improvement of the various institutional actions.
Actions for Society Program
The Actions for Society Program at CRS aims to provide actions that contribute to the social, environmental, and economic commitment, enabling the exercise of citizenship and critical participation in the social context. In addition, the Program promotes research projects that contemplate environmental actions and extension experiences, which are configured as teaching and learning opportunities through the dialogical relationship between CRS and society.
The Program comprises the Project Scientific Literacy and Socioenvironmental Actions at the Marine Base on Ilha do Governador - Marinha do Brasil and the Project Education and Society, besides including the Research Group on Socioenvironmental Actions, Applied Botany and Educational Evaluation.
Scientific Literacy and Socioenvironmental Actions at the Marine Corps Base on Ilha do Governador - Marinha do Brasil
The objective of this project is to promote actions aligned to the sustainable management of coparticipative character in a space for multidisciplinary action, aiming to produce and disseminate knowledge in the Socio-environmental and Environmental Protection area, as well as to propose the strategic development and the management of plant diversity resources for the ecological suitability process at the Brazilian Navy's Marine Corps Base on Ilha do Governador.
The project also foresees courses on tree planting and gardening techniques with emphasis on agro-ecology and the implementation of the Social-Environmental Responsibility Center for CRS/JBRJ extension actions, such as the reforestation of areas in the Ilha do Governador Training Field, the recovery of a slope and the creation of a nursery for seedlings of native Atlantic Forest species.
Extramural Education Project
The objective of the Centro de Responsabilidade Socioambiental Extramuros Education Project is to offer students, professionals and other interested parties, through on-site or distance learning extension courses and/or workshops, training and theoretical and practical deepening in themes linked to the areas of Human, Environmental, Agrobiological and Health Sciences. In addition, the project aims to develop and implement a dialogical space with society at CRS, to strengthen this link in order to deepen society's sense of belonging and co-participation in the transformation of social reality, and also to share in an inclusive way the knowledge generated through the articulation between teaching and research.
Among the sub-projects of the CRS that constitute the Extramuros Project are the Sensory Garden Collection, Orchids and Society, Sustainable Pedagogy and the Garden Goes to School.
The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden's Sensory Garden Collection, a space located next to the Cactus Collection, aims to provide visitors with a new way to perceive nature using the five senses by interacting directly with the plants present in the space. This way, the Sensory Garden becomes an institutionalized space of inclusion for people with disabilities (PCD), besides providing to all visitors that the learning process occurs in a pleasant and interactive way, facilitated by a trained monitor.
The Orchids and Society subproject promotes the planting of orchids donated by partners, relying on the supervised work of young people from the training courses promoted by CRS, who will have the opportunity to practice gardening and sustainability concepts, and also to positively change the surrounding landscape, reinforcing the bonds of belonging, based on the premise that education is a way to transform the individual and society.
The subprojects Sustainable Pedagogy and Garden Goes to School have the objective of contributing to formal and non-formal education in schools, partner institutions or in the surroundings of the CRS on agro-ecological and sustainability themes. Its actions are mediated by young people from CRS' training courses, IC interns, civil servants and professional collaborators from several areas, aiming to enable experiences, generate knowledge, and create teaching and learning opportunities through the dialogical relationship between CRS and the society, using Sustainable Pedagogy as an educational strategy.
Research Group on Socio-environmental Actions, Applied Botany, and Educational Evaluation
In order to develop and strengthen scientific research at the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, the CRS conducts research in the agrobiological, human, environmental, and health sciences with the objective of finding solutions to everyday problems. These researches draw on theories, knowledge, methods and techniques accumulated from research communities (from Academia) to solve scientific questions around socio-environmental intersections (economic, environmental and social).
In 2016, the Center for Socio-environmental Responsibility, in partnership with the Directorate of Scientific Research (DIPEQ), created the Research Group on Socio-environmental Actions, Applied Botany and Educational Evaluation. This group has an interdisciplinary and multiprofessional character and is formed by doctors, masters, specialists, technicians, and scientific collaborators from other institutions such as UFBA, UERJ, UFRJ, and Farmanguinhos/Fiocruz.
The creation of products/processes is the main focus of the research of this group. Its scientific production aims to support and develop research projects focused on socio-environmental actions, in order to contribute to the academic education of students from elementary school to post-doctoral studies. Today, the group has four main research lines:
- Agroecology and Ecological Adequacy
Human action is the main responsible for the degradation of the planet. The use of land for large-scale farming, extensive cattle raising, and the urban growth process itself are the main villains. On the other hand, man is the only one who can reverse this picture, either through replanting strategies or through preservationist educational attitudes.
Creating products and processes for this socio-environmental problem is of extreme importance today, as it guarantees food sovereignty and quality of life for the Brazilian population. This line of research includes projects that investigate the best use of degraded soils due to deforestation for agricultural exploitation, by crops or pasture.
Therefore, it proposes to foster and contribute to the production of traditional and scientific knowledge in the scope of Ecological Adequacy and Agroecology in degraded and urban areas, transforming them through revegetation into a didactic and Socio-Environmental Education environment.
- Evaluation and Quality Control of Vegetables of Socio-Environmental Importance
The concept of health is something quite changeable and inseparable from the social, cultural, and even environmental component. From the mid-twentieth century on, several institutions began to advocate and adopt a broader definition of health, which included, in addition to physical well-being, mental, social, and even spiritual well-being. In this context, the environmental quality and the quality of the different raw materials obtained from the natural environment also play a preponderant role on human health, qualities that are closely associated with the levels of air, water, and soil pollution, which necessarily refer to the quality of the plants used for food or medicinal purposes, among other factors.
Therefore, this line of research aims to analyze plants of socio-environmental importance due to their use in urban forestry, their medicinal properties or their consumption as food, in order to establish parameters that allow their use in a safer way. In addition, it also aims to draw socio-environmental education strategies that encourage the preservation of the environment and the adoption of healthier and more sustainable practices, and to strengthen and foster public policies concerned.
- Ethnobiology, Assessment, and Socioenvironmental Education
Sustainable education has become unquestionable, both at home and in schools and companies. This line of research develops a new look on education, a new way of being and being in the environment, which "thinks the practice" (Paulo Freire), avoiding the bureaucratization of the look and behavior. In this way, it promotes an awareness and transformation of critical thinking about sustainability. Its goal is to understand how humans relate to and learn from biodiversity, aiming at the social, economic, and environmental well-being of communities and their various social actors in their different cultures. All these demands are around the sciences of Ethnobiology, Evaluation, and, mainly, Socio-Environmental Education.
- Reproductive Biology, Phenology and Pollination Ecology
Its objectives are to know the reproductive system of plant species and ecological interactions with pollinators and seed dispersers, in addition to elaborating socio-environmental actions for the conservation of pollinators in urban areas; to know the vegetative and reproductive phenology of species in natural and ex situ conditions; and to use the study as a tool for diagnosing the actions of climate change on the dynamics of plant populations.
Partnerships
One of the most outstanding features of the Socio-environmental Responsibility Center is the extent of the partnerships established since its creation. Its projects are supported by a consistent network of internal and external partners from the three sectors, which has allowed the advancement of actions and enabled the continuous improvement of infrastructure.
From the first sector, its formal partner is the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro, through the JECRIM - Special Criminal Court; from the second sector, STIHL, a leader in the Brazilian market of motorized tools; and, from the third sector, the Instituto da Criança, recognized as one of the 100 best NGOs in the world for investing in projects that promote social development. The project also counts on the contribution of donors through the Association of Friends of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro.
Collaborate with CRS!
Contribute to our history! The success of the Education and Work Program depends on the support and partnership of public and private institutions, and individual contributions.
Individuals: donations through identified bank deposit.
Legal Entities: enjoy tax benefits, through Federal Law No. 13.204 of 12/15/2015, adding value and reputation to your brand*.
*Donations made by legal entities taxed under the Actual Profit may be deducted from the Taxable Operational Profit up to the limit of 2%, before its deduction is computed..
Associação de Amigos do Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
CNPJ:30114011/0001-63
Bank Santander (033)
Agency: 3728
CC: 13.000378-0