ACCIONA volunteers give workshops on sustainability to schoolchildren from 11 countries

To coincide with World Environment Day, ACCIONA is organising workshops in which some of its employees give pupils between 7 and 11 years of age some notions around sustainability. This year 300 volunteers have joined the initiative, and they will teach more than 6,500 schoolchildren from Spain, Portugal, Croatia, the USA, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Poland and Gabon.

The ACCIONA employees will travel today to the hundred or so schools that are particiting in the program, for two hours of activities and games with the children designed to teach - in a practical and enjoyable way - how to save energy or water, how to make the best use of natural resources, and some basic notions about renewable energy sources. To do this, the volunteers will be given a teaching guide and materials to do exercises that will help the pupils to improve their 'carbon footprint' on a daily basis.

The main objective of the initiative, held for the third year in succession, is to get children involved in improving the environment from the things they do in school. Among other activities, the pupils will calculate how much water they consume every day, converting used bottles, Tetra Brik packs and yoghurt pots into musical instruments, piggy banks or robots, and will discover which things they usually do are polluting activities. They will also receive a "sustainability detective card" that will make them feel responsible for caring for the environment in their schools.

This year ACCIONA has extended the program to three new countries - Portugal, Croatia and the USA - to join the seven that already took part: Spain, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Poland.

Through Volunteer's Day, ACCIONA seeks to create awareness in schoolchildren about their active role in sustainable development and at the same time encourage company employees to take its philosophy on board, based on a commitment to low-carbon business models, activities that avoid CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases and optimize the consumption of energy and water.

The program is part of the company's policy of disseminating sustainability values. It also puts these in practive in its 'Sustainability Workshop', a training program that is free of charge for participating schools and includes teacher training and guided visits to installations such as wind farms, R&D centers and wastewater treatment plants.