Salamanca (Spain). Mary Help of Christians School of Bejar (Salamanca), of the FMA of Mary Help of Christians Province (SPA), is among the finalist schools of the 6th Edition of Services for Learning Award, promoted by the Edebé Publishing House and the Spanish Network of Learning Services (ApS), in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Professional Formation.
The Jury, made up of ApS experts, underlined the quality of the projects of this edition marked by the pandemic, highlighting the Service-Learning initiatives. Service-Learning is a way of learning while serving the community. Faced with a social need, young people undertake a service activity that helps them to apply and consolidate learning in knowledge, skills, attitudes and competences, awakening their talent and putting it at the service of the common good. In this edition of the Award, 330 projects were presented, promoted by 541 educational centers and social entities – with the participation of almost 37,000 children and young people who dedicated more than 700,000 hours of service – on issues related to health, environment, immigration, information technologies, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mary Help of Christians School of Béjar presented itself with the “One Voice” Project, in which the students of the High School proposed and experienced, within the school and in the surrounding area, their commitment to the environment. “One day we asked ourselves: How can we improve our planet?” – this was the input for the project – “And it occurred to us to speak with ‘one voice’.”
The project aims to create a culture and logistics for recycling in the school, nurturing pupils’ knowledge of ecological issues. At a second level, young people set themselves the goal of creating collaborations with other entities and associations of the city for a common environmental plan, actively participating in the cleaning and reforestation of the spaces of the Municipality of Bejar. In collaboration with young people with different abilities of the Asprodes Association, they lived a day of ecological commitment in the El Castañar area of Bejar, cleaning up the environment and planting more than 200 chestnut and strawberry trees, which ended with games organized by the students of the School.
With the annual invitation, the Spanish Learning-Services Network, the Edebé Publishing House, and the Ministry of Education and Professional Formation recognize the work of Educational Centers and Social Entities and give visibility to the initiatives conceived with this methodology of educational effectiveness.
