Environmental Education and Sustainable Development Project at the Osvaldo Timóteo Ecological Reserve I designed and implemented a project in environmental education for sustainable development, to teach adolescents living in rural Brazil how to preserve the local environment and how to work as eco-tour guides for a nature reserve in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. The project was conducted in cooperation with the Reserva Ecológica Osvaldo Timóteo (Osvaldo Timóteo Ecological Reserve), in São Jose da Lage, Alagoas, Brazil. I will be presenting a paper on this project at the Annual Meeting of the North American Association for Environmental Education. [Read Project Summary] The Osvaldo Timóteo Ecological Reserve is one of the few remaining pieces of Northern Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, which used to cover a large region -- today 93% of the forest has been destroyed in favor of large plantations of sugar cane and other monocultures. The Reserve is near the more well-known Murici Reserve. Near the Reserve lives an economically disadvantaged community descended from indigenous and African roots. This community lacks infrastructure and governmental support. The community depends economically on work in sugar-cane plantations, and as this is seasonal work, struggles economically during the other six months of the year. This project's goal was to teach this community's youth and their families about economic opportunities, such as working as eco-tour guides in the Reserve, creation of saleable craft products using byproducts of sugar-cane farming, and the development of organic vegetable gardens. Many local children leave school at a young age to work in this community, in order to aid their families -- a central goal of this project was to create opportunities for older siblings, so that children would be able to attain a high-school education. At the same time, it was important to teach the importance of environmental preservation. One previously popular method for economic development was the hunting and sale of endangered animals -- this provides only short-term economic gain and is not sustainable. We attempted to teach ways to develop economically without destroying the region's environmental heritage. This project used a number of pedagogical methods, including games, theater, group discussions and presentations, conversations with community members, and workshops with artists from a local city. Pictures from the Project: (Photos courtesy of Caio Loureiro)