FEE was chosen for their work to facilitate learning outcomes that support a transition to a circular economy for green transformation.
13 October 2022, Tucson (Arizona, USA): The Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) was selected by Pratt & Whitney and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) as a winner of the first-ever Pratt & Whitney Global E-STEM Awards. Satheeshkumar Kumarasingam, Pratt & Whitney’s chief transformation and strategy officer, bestowed grants totalling $250,000 to 13 nonprofit organizations in 11 countries. Each group demonstrated a remarkable commitment to advancing environmental, science, technology, engineering, and math (E-STEM) education programs for underrepresented students ages 11–18.
Eco-Schools Project Advancing Circular Economy (E-SPACE) teaches students about the circular economy, renewable energy, and waste reduction. The programme includes lesson plans for teachers in several languages, a chart on strategies to Advance Circular Economy and a curricular framework for Advancing Circular economy.
Each tool has been developed to support E-STEM competencies by enabling learners to acquire literacy in the form of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to take positive actions to reduce waste through the entire lifecycle and not only at the recycling stage. It will also help learners to support scientific temperament on not accepting the status quo and developing the agency for problem-solving by increasing circularity using different strategies.
Finally, the lesson plans promote engineering skills by asking to have choices like the individual's right to repair as an integral principle of a circular economy.
“The transition towards a Circular Economy requires that we not only look at managing problems downstream but also focus on solutions upstream in the production and consumption systems by reimagining the design of the products and materials used. E-SPACE lesson plans will extend the limited scope of recycling materials initiatives to ultimately question current production and consumption systems by encouraging critical and analytical thinking for problem-solving to promote critical actions based on science at the local level for global issues”, said Daniel Schaffer, CEO of FEE.
The prize will help FEE to expand the initial pilot project to 80 schools in eight countries in South America, Africa, and Asia.
A panel of judges from Pratt & Whitney and NAAEE selected the recipients from a pool of nearly 175 applicants spanning 40 countries who applied between May and July 2022. The winners were announced in Tucson, Arizona, during NAAEE2022 Annual International Conference, with the theme Educating for Change.
Learn more about all of this year’s winners by reading their biographies: http://prattwhitney.com/ESTEM
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