2023 WISE Awards finalist takes learning to nature

The Organisation for Environmental Education and Protection (OpEPA), one of the 2023 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Awards finalists, is focusing on reconnecting the children and youngsters to the nature to build more sustainable communities.
Headquartered in Bogota, Columbia, the OpEPA, has been focusing on this theme since 1998 through nature-based and regenerative education, heritage interpretation and social weaving, with a regenerative approach to cultural, social, economic and environmental dimensions.
WISE, the global education initiative of Qatar Foundation, recently announced the 12 finalists for the WISE Awards 2023 and the final six projects will be announced in September. The WISE Awards winners will be celebrated at the global summit to be held in November this year.
OpEPA has so far implemented projects and activities in 26 of the 32 departments in the country, in four work fields: nature-based education, nature tourism, regenerative cultures and planetary limits: climate change, biodiversity loss, land and water use.
The programme has so far benefited over 140,000 in Columbia with a geographical reach in Columbia, US, Peru, Costa Rica and Chile. It aims to on reconnecting children, youth and people to nature and earth to build more sustainable, regenerative and peaceful communities.
The programme has the city-wide Biodivercity Nature-Based Education Networks which are spaces for integration and active collaboration between schools and local actors to appropriate green spaces and create nature-based learning communities. Their origin began in 2015 with the creation of Red de Colegios Cerros de Bogotá, a school network with active collaboration between 101 public and private educational institutions and eight organisation allies. It promotes the appropriation of the Eastern Hills, a strategic ecosystem through Nature-Based Education (NBE).
Luis Camargo, founder and director of OpEPA, is working to strengthen bioregional transitions to regenerative cultures. According to the organisation, “We replicated the model with the Ministry of Environment as our implementation partner in 13 'biodivercities' throughout Colombia. In this process, we created 13 city nature-based networks that connected 145 schools and 460 teachers using in-person capacity-building workshops, online education programmes, and network weaving.”
The nature-based school networks focuses on consolidating a learning community with citizenship skills that promote harmonising the people and nature relationship, allowing them to become planetary stewards and ensuring social wellbeing. It also favours the positioning of students and teachers as multipliers of good practices and ethical behaviour to face environmental and social challenges.
By involving many students from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds in the city, the network promotes equity and inclusion while developing environmental stewardship skills of students and communities. Furthermore, the network uses the city’s natural ecosystems as a learning environment, where collaborative conservation projects are designed and implemented.
The key impact of the project is the activation of diverse learning communities around NBE and the appropriation of green spaces in and surrounding the cities. In the future, OpEPA aim to expand this initiative as the key educational component of the Biodivercities model in Latin America and worldwide. The organisation’s final goal is to activate cities globally to become nature-based learning cities and inspire learning communities to embrace nature as a key learning environment for all subjects.
Each year, the WISE Awards recognise and promote six successful and innovative projects that are addressing global educational challenges. Since 2009, WISE has received more than 5,300 applications from over 151 countries. 90 projects have been awarded, from a wide variety of sectors and locations for their innovation, positive contribution and ability to adapt and scale.