Instituto ECOAR Para a Cidadania

WHAT IS IT | EDUCATION | ACTIVITIES | THE WORKSHOP OF THE FUTURE | ECOARES

The Workshop of the Future

The Workshop of the Future is a diagnostic tool and participatory planning process created by the Ecoar Institute. It consists of a series of playful activities that stimulate reflection on social-environmental issues, helping community members to organize their ideas, seek solutions to problems and to promote an improved quality of life in each one’s space, as well as to gain a consiousness of the watershed in which they live.

The Workshop of the Future is divided into the following stages:
•Tree of Dreams workshop;
•Wailing Wall workshop;
•History of our “section;
•Thematic workshops

Tree of Dreams workshop – Has its origin in the beginning of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, when people from all over the world wrote their dreams of the future on paper shaped like leaves. These leaves were taped to the branches of a gigantic tree, that was installed on Flamengo Beach, in Rio de Janeiro, with the symbol of a happier future for everyone. This is the moment when participants were stimulated to imagine how they would like to see their street, their school, the planet. These dreams are, then, writings, drawn and/or painted and transformed into the Tree of Dreams and collectively mounted.

Wailing Wall workshop – The Wailing Wall of Jerusalem is visited until today by pilgrims that go to put, in the spaces between the stones, their dreams and sufferings written on pieces of paper. This is the moment when participants are stimulated to express all that they do not like, all that bothers or disturbs their quality of life, and in this way, the wall is constructed.

History of our “section/area” – Is the recuperation of community memory, that could be done in various ways: speaking with the elderly of the community, and also using local associations, schools and churchs as sources of information. Collecting whatever type of material that could help to put together the history of the area. It is the moment to understand that the present-day problems have an origin, that to identify them, helps us to resolve them definitively.

The Network – The network is a system made up of individuals capable of organizing people, organizations and institutions, in an equal and democratic form, around a common objective, descentralizing information, stimulating cooperative participation and guaranteeing the autonomy of each person. In this moment, the communities of the various areas begin to know each other and exchange information, through integrated events and activities. The recognition that we are not alone in a determinate situation and the experience of an area contribute to the improvement of each person and is extremely strengthening.

Thematic workshops – This activity consisted of conducting lectures and/or workshops to deepen the community’s most significant demands.