10.08.2021

Caderno Novo de Novo

The BCIA (Beacon Community in Action) is a group of volunteer parents that works on behalf of the school community. One of the missions looks carefully and dedicates to the matter of sustainability. In groups, they plan action strategies to minimize problems that are part of our daily lives and that have a great impact on the environment. Below is a text written by the families about one of these actions.

“At the end of the school year, a question arises for the vast majority of families: what to do with the notebooks used by our children? Thinking about this, the BCIA Sustainability Group created, at the end of 2020, the Caderno Novo de Novo Project. The objective of this program is to reuse notebooks and folders used by the school’s students, as well as by children who lack school supplies. The project is not only aimed at preserving nature, saving everyone financially, but it is also a way of teaching our children that we can reuse, in a sustainable way, the school material they receive every year.

In early 2021, the families engaged in the action donated the requested material, which was separated and organized into two parts: the first was the reassembly of notebooks to be donated and the second was the production of notebooks that returns to school and that can be used by Beacon students.

During the first semester, more than 230 volumes, including lined and drawing notebooks, received new, colored covers, without the school logo, and were donated to three institutions. Another part, made up of around 50 notebooks, was allocated to Projeto Primavera, which offers support classes for the children of Beacon employees.

For the second semester, more than 350 notebooks will be available to students, who perhaps filled in all the notebook sheets provided by the school at the beginning of the year. These will have a smaller number of pages and will receive their own cover, in gray, with the project logo and a generic space to fill in the data such as the student’s name, discipline, grade and teacher’s name.

The Caderno Novo de Novo Project has the special help of the printing company’s employees, who printed the covers, helped in the preparation of the layout, as well as, later, they will be in charge of distributing the material. Management also played a key role, welcoming the idea, giving us freedom in decision-making and allowing us to implement the action.

 Finally, we would like to emphasize that the student will always have the option of receiving a new notebook, not being obliged to choose the gray notebook, proposed in the project.”