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Their school, called Notre Dame, is located on the city's
tourist hot spot of Ipanema beach and has just received a Blue
School stamp from the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO as
part of an initiative to protect the Atlantic Ocean.
The stamp recognizes school programs around the world in aim of
protecting oceans.
The initiative comes at a time scientists fear that over 90% of
the world's marine food supplies are at risk from environmental
changes such as rising temperatures and pollution.
"It's to educate, it's to develop awareness, it's the formation
of a generation that understands that we need the ocean to
continue to exist as a species on this planet," says head of NGO
Instituto Mar Urbano Ricardo Gomes.
The stamp takes into account 16 countries located near the
Atlantic Ocean and follows the UN's decade of Ocean Science for
Sustainable Development initiative, which started in 2021 and
will end in 2030.
Alongside NGO Instituto Mar Urbano, Notre Dame school currently
offers activities that aim to create awareness among children of
different ages to preserve urban beaches.
UNESCO welcomed the initiative as it instills curiosity in
children about the ocean and its role in generating oxygen,
regulating the climate, and generating life for the planet,
UNESCO's coordinator for social and natural sciences in Brazil
Fabio Eon said.
On Ipanema, the school kids play on the famous beach's shore
while cleaning up.
"I loved it," said 8-year-old Notre Dame student Maria Carolina
Sampaio, "because we cleaned up the trash on the beach and if it
went in the ocean."
(Reporting by Sergio Queiroz; Writing by Carolina Pulice;
Editing by Steven Grattan and Aurora Ellis)
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