The environment can also be learned from children’s open hearts and curious eyes. It was with this premise that TerrinhasCast was born, a podcast starring students from the Terrinhas project – an environmental education initiative that transforms public schools in the Doce River Basin into spaces of care, awareness and transformation.
Recorded with children aged 10 to 12 from the municipalities of Aimorés, Baixo Guandu, Itueta, Santa Rita do Itueto and Resplendor, the podcast gives the little ones a chance to share, in their own words, everything they have learned about sustainability, the environment, living together and belonging to the territory.
With a light, fun and accessible language, TerrinhasCast is divided into three blocks: VideoTape, in which participants watch and comment on scenes of colleagues at work; Draw for me to understand, in which they illustrate the cycles of nature with their own explanations; and Ping-Pong Eco, a dynamic question-and-answer game that encourages spontaneity and environmental reasoning.
“The idea of doing TerrinhasCast came from the understanding that, in order to build a society that is more respectful of the environment, we need to start with the little ones,” explains Thaís Cesário, Instituto Terra’s Education coordinator. “We identified the podcast as a fun and light-hearted way of showing what happens here outside the Institute.”
Each episode features a different class and covers topics such as global warming, environmental responsibility, community relations, preserving the Rio Doce and the importance of taking care of the school, the family and the planet as a whole.
By placing children as the protagonists of the environmental narrative, the podcast not only reinforces the pedagogical objectives of the Terrinhas project, but also inspires other communities to involve their children in the decisions that shape the future of the planet. Through laughter, drawing, talking and listening, TerrinhasCast reminds us that educating for sustainability is, above all, an act of love.
The episodes are available for free on Instituto Terra’s Spotify and YouTube.