IPÊ Environmental Education in the region includes the villages of Superagüi, Peças, Bertioga, Barbados, Guapicum, and Laranjeiras. Environmental education is designed to promote the protection of local species, such as the black-faced lion tamarin and the Red-tailed Amazon, offering learning opportunities that encourage attitudes for environmental protection. The program also teaches new skills so people can improve their quality of life, through practices that focus on local nature. This includes workshops and courses. Knowledge and values are transmitted through art-education activities, such as theatrical performances, visits to the communities, meetings with groups of women, always seeking community involvement.
IPÊ activities reach several social segments, strengthening or establishing groups that work on plays, embroidery, sewing, and crochet. During meetings, lectures and visits, educators talk about issues that join scientific information and traditional values and knowledge. Furthermore, IPÊ always encourages discussions on social and environmental actions that can be implemented regionally. Collective practices are encouraged, because, together, people become stronger to improve the quality of th eir lives and of the environment where they live. Groups are also showing interest in organizing themselves in associations and cooperatives, which will be possible when these groups are stronger and more mature in their purposes.
IPÊ also contributes to pedagogical contents in villages' schools, using strategies as art-education, field visits, and research involving local inhabitants. Therefore, there is a great integration of schools with communities and with the local natural environments. Such activities favor teachers' qualification and the development of didactic projects to improve general learning and the appreciation of the local nature.
