Environmental education is essential in the diffusion of the ethics, values, and skills that are critical to sustainable transformations. This talk presents the experience of non-formal environmental education approaches held in schools in the Petrópolis region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 1997–2016. The talk intends to firstly convey the commonly identified environmental sustainability challenges that the communities of the Petrópolis region are facing. Secondly, the talk aims to convey key insights on how non-formal environmental education practices can strengthen gardening skills, environmental ethics, and sustainable food practices. These approaches have the potential to enhance the capacity of students toward sustainable transformations through encouraging them to be engaged with local social-environmental challenges. Finally, it hopes to add new insights to the growing literature on, and practice of, non-formal environmental education, and it is hoped, to inspire new educational approaches among sustainability educators.

Átila Calvente, PhD student at the Public Policy Program, UFRJ/Rio de Janiero. Átila has been working for over 20 years in Petrópolis with neighborhood schools in the favelas and the rural countryside, bringing farmers and disadvantaged children together to plant school vegetable gardens and learn about the origin of the foods they eat, and how it relates to their own lifestyles as they grow. In addition, he has experience among settlers in the Amazon, ranchers and indians on the Ilha do Bananal in Tocantins, as well as his own experience as an organic coffee and dairy farmer in the Atlantic Forest in the Serrana area of Rio.