OUR HISTORY
During our time studying and working at São Paulo State University (UNESP) we always felt that the campus needed to improve its network of cycling paths, since several buildings are not connected, even though most students travel by bike to the university. The uneven distribution of green spaces and arboreal cover within our campus are also limitations for the active mobility in our campus, since several regions are uncomfortable for walking and cycling, especially during the summer. Furthermore, Brazil is the world's champion in pesticide consumption and is experiencing high levels of forest loss. Also, the city of Rio Claro (the campus city) presents poor indicators of environmental quality and degraded rivers and streams. So, "Challenge Campus 2030 - edition 2" was an opportunity to transform life on campus, by improving the environmental quality and increasing sustainability by encouraging active mobility and the adoption of agroecology practices among our community.
The announcement about the opportunity of participating on this international challenge aroused in Gabriela Rosa the desire of creating a team that could develop a project to face these problems, by transforming hope into concrete actions. So, Gabriela started looking for people to form a team and after several invitations, Araucaria Team was born, composed by: Gabriela Rosa (PhD student at UNESP), Milton Ribeiro (UNESP Professor), João Carlos Pena (post-doc fellow at UNESP), Leticia Bulascoschi (PhD student at Esalq-USP), and Monica Laras Rosa (publicist from Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico).
This team was responsible for making Araucaria the winning project of Challenge Campus 2030 - edition 2.
Challenge Campus 2030 - edition 2
Challenge Campus 2030 is an international challenge organized by Agorize, in partnership with the United Nations (UNRIC) and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF). Its objective was to encourage University campuses to achieve at least 3 of 17 SDG in 10 years, by proposing solutions that could be considered socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. The challenge was composed by 3 stages:
1) From September, 24th, 2020 to February, 7th, 2021, we had to create a diverse team of 5 people maximum and upload a presentation explaining our project idea in 5 slides. In total, 1997 people from 680 teams and 79 countries participated
2) 31 teams from all the world were selected.
From March, 2nd until April, 18th, 2021, the teams were invited to take their concept further following several video on the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations and AUF. The teams produced a five slides presentation and a two minutes video presenting themselves and their project' goals.
3) On June 11, 2021, the 6 finalist teams had the chance to pitch and defend their project in the presence of the Jury comprising members of the UN, AUF, UNRIC, UNESCO, AFD, IRD, Enactus, SoScience, Groupe SOS, Impact Campus, Utopies/Campus responsables.
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