An Overview Of Our Solution
Edukatu is a continuous program by Akatu focused on the education for conscious consumption and sustainability for Brazilian teachers and students from the 1st to 9th grades, mainly in public schools. A free access platform in the internet is provided which contains texts, infographics, videos, games, activities plans for classroom, step by step challenges covering various consumption subjects. In person capacity building of teachers to use the platform and to deepen their knowledge in specific subjects is also offered, as long as there are funds for this activity. Challenges are proposed for schools to develop teamwork in conscious consumption applied to the schools and to communities. The final outcome is to change the behavior of teachers and students towards conscious consumption as a way to contribute to sustainability through the change of lifestyles.
- Population Impacted: 120,000 students & 10,000 educators
- Continent: South America
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
Formal education in Brazil has not yet properly recognized the importance of education for sustainability, especially for young children. For instance, it has not yet been included in the Basic Education formal curriculum. Edukatu helps promote conscious consumption and sustainable habits and practices among students during their basic education (6-15 years old). Although “environmental education” is commonly present in schools, the linkage between consumption acts/ lifestyles and their impacts on the environment and society is not studied. As a consequence, it does not become clear to students how sustainability principles and values in their day-to-day consumption acts can help transform societies through the change in behaviors of individuals / collective groups of individuals. Edukatu allows the development of the perception of how valuable those behaviors are for society and the environment in order to have society engaged in the effort towards sustainability.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
Edukatu is the first learning network, in Brazil, on conscious consumption and sustainability. It offers a free on-line platform for teachers and 6 to 15 years old students in public schools to voluntarily adhere to a learning process which is fun for students and rigorous for teachers. It provides multimedia contents for them to engage in educational activities and in the exchange of knowledge. It helps students to understand the value of empathy and helps them to use their acts of consumption to positively transform the environment and society when buying, using and discarding products or services. This technological, dynamic, collaborative and non-hierarchical proposal is complemented by challenges with awards offered to teachers and students to stimulate dialogic educational processes, autonomy of the students and mobilization of the school community. More at http://bit.ly/2op8NNJ
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The Edukatu Project is based on a methodology Akatu has developed over the years for changing consumption behavior. As a social practice, consumption has some individual and social barriers and triggers. This methodology preconizes that our pedagogical activities should enable the students to realize that:
1. consumption acts significantly impact their own lives, the natural environment, the society and the economy – (RELEVANCE);
2. their acts of consumption affect everybody and the impacts will return to themselves (INTERDEPENDENCE);
3. their acts of consumption, or those of a small group of people, when repeated for a long period of time, will cause very large impacts (DAY TO DAY);
4. they lead by example, even if they are not trying to do so (EXEMPLARITY);
5. they can and should mobilize other people towards conscious consumption and, when adopted by many people, will rapidly cause very large impacts (MULTIPLICATION);
6. they should form and participate in groups directed towards creating a more sustainable future since this will strengthen and value their practice of conscious consumption (SENSE OF BELONGING);
Based on Akatu’s 17-years of experience, all these perceptions combined lead to reflections that will change people’s behaviors and lifestyles in a permanent manner. That’s why it is so important to experience this critical thinking from a very early age.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
Edukatu also has two guidelines that can be highlighted in this context: the recognition of children and youths as important social actors, encouraging them to mobilize their family and their community around the cause, and the experience based learning, encouraging the students to get to work through projects, in order to guarantee the transdisciplinary perspective and the involvement of the whole school and its community. These principles multiply the outreach of the project, taking it beyond the school gates.
Describe your implementation
The main strategy to implement the Edukatu project is to work in partnership with Municipal Education Secretariats and Environmental Councils and authorities. These partnerships create opportunities to work with educators and students in a larger scale, by promoting local workshops to raise awareness amongst the participants and to invite them to use Edukatu as a tool to keep on working with sustainability and conscious consumption in a more permanent manner, during the whole school year.
The main risk presented before Edukatu project is structural: in Brazil, a large number of schools does not have technical conditions to use the platform properly, due to lack of computers or proper internet connection. During the project implementation, some complementary strategies were developed to overcome these difficulties, such as the development of an off-line version of the activities.
Presently, Edukatu’s main challenge is to stimulate teachers and students to engage with Edukatu in each and every year of the educational cycle, so to guarantee the internalization of sustainability values and of conscious consumption behaviors. New strategies and additional partnerships are being designed to achieve this objective, such as influencing federal public policy to include the theme in the obligatory curriculum for schools and influencing state and municipal education Secretaries to establish bonuses for teachers who continuously use the platform.
External connections
The key partners of the project are:
- Municipal Education Secretariats and Environmental Councils and authorities: Strategic partnership, focused on reaching teachers and students of as many municipalities as possible;
- Supporters: Financial support for the regular activities and for the development of new pedagogical contents;
- Social Organizations: Content partnerships, and support in the development of activities and exchange experience with the partners networks, specially schools;
- Media: Pro bono communication in the press of the successful experiences and the most innovative initiatives.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
The desired behaviors are being adopted by over 120,000 students and around 10,000 educators (estimated numbers) all around the country, directly reached by the project. The extent to which the change in behaviors actually occurred was not measured for the universe of students and teachers involved in the project. Changes in behavior were observed during the activities and could be actually be seen in practice in the projects developed as a response to the challenge posed by Edukatu and responded by students and teachers with activities inside the schools or in the communities. Akatu developed a method to measure the change in consciousness in consumption but, at this point, it is not applicable to young people. It is necessary to research young people in terms of behavioral change in order to systematically measure the change in behavior, using the general methodology developed by Akatu for the Conscious Consumption Test applicable to adults.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Edukatu has a section called “Circuits” – which are a series of gamified learning activities distributed in a pedagogical sequence of individual and collective challenges. Gathered in groups, students and educators go through these activities, which are concluded by the promotion of an intervention campaign in the theme they are working on (water, residues, climate change, energy consumption etc.). The reports of these campaigns are published in the Edukatu platform and are one of the central sources of information about the concrete results of the project. In 2017 alone, we’ve received reports that show reduction of residues generation by 20% and an increase on recycling by 40% in some of the schools working with Edukatu.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
Edukatu has activities focusing on several themes related to conscious consumption and sustainability. For instance, there is a circuit on food waste, and the reports sent by schools applying these activities shown that food waste in these schools have been reduced by 75%. On water and energy waste, the reports shown a reduction of 25% in water and energy consumption. Some of the activities are developed with the engagement of the families of students and of members of the communities so that there is a broader effect in terms of benefits.
Sustainability
Funds for Edukatu, up to now, came from grants received from companies interested in seeing education for sustainability to grow in scale. Now, Akatu is pursuing new forms of fund raising so to be able to replicate the use of Edukatu in more schools. The project has recently been recognized by local government for its public interest and shall receive government subsidies very soon. Also, the project was recognized by the Commission of the Banco do Brasil Foundation Award on Social Technologies as a Social Technology, that is being replicated in its use and scaled up in its benefits.
Return on investment
Edukatu is an on-going project. The investments made in 2013, year in which the platform was created and implemented, were of around U$ 130,000. This represented an average of US$ 3,25 per user. As the outreach of the project expands, the investment per new user is becoming smaller. Every year, since 2014, investments were made to develop contents (in the various formats, including “circuits”) for several themes. Yearly investments average US$ 70,000 to 90,000.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
It has not been replicated yet, but it could be done. Edukatu was presented in Panama by invitation from the UNEP of the United Nations to explore the possibility of replicating in some countries in Latin America within the Sustainable Lifestyles & Education Program of the 10 Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Production & Consumption. During the next two years, Edukatu will be developing a series of contents & pedagogical materials focused on the SDGs & that should be of interest to other countries. These contents can also be produced in partnership with institutions from other countries, increasing its outreach. It could also be replicated by being translated to English and Spanish, using the same platform & replicating or adapting its themes, methodologies & examples. Each country or region has its own particularities in their educational system. The contents & mobilization strategies can be adapted according to their realities & the available opportunities for dissemination.