Small hands saving the world

Small hands saving the world: Today's children are tomorrow's adults, we must educate them for the future

Santiago de Cali, ColombiaSantiago de Cali, Colombia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iYkUe8ktBQ

Year Founded:

2014

Organization type:

hybrid

Project Stage:

Scaling

Budget:

$10,000 - $50,000

Website:

http://www.popsrecreacion.com/

Project Summary

Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

We must create environmental awareness in our children to ensure a sustainable future and save the world from extinction.

WHAT IF - Inspiration: Write one sentence that describes a way that your project dares to ask, "WHAT IF?"

What if today's children, who are tomorrow's adults, don't mind about saving the world?

About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

We are trying to conserve the world nowadays, but we are not educating children to conserve the world for the future. Most of children are living in a world of media and electronic devices, where ecology is not contemplated.

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

This project is about educating today's children. We want they participate in real experiences where they can learn about recycling PET bottles, which are used for all kind of drinks. The children must do manual labor to turn the bottles into pots. After learning about the importance of plants and ecology they must adopt a baby plant, name it and bring it home to care for it. After two months, we took them to the mountains of our city to plant them and watch them grow.

Awards

media interviews

Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

The best way for children to learn easily and enjoying it, is getting fun while they learn about the recycling of PET bottles and crafts made with these bottles. Thus they are experiencing innovation and connecting emotionally with their creations. After playing to care for plants, they decided to adopt, attach a name and plant it in a container that they manufactured, then they must take care of it for two months and then plant it in one of the mountains that surround our city

Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.

Nowadays more than 200 children have taken part in our plants and learning programs on recycling and ecology. Every children have adopted their plants and every time they look at the mountain they recall that in that place there is a tree which has a name and which has been planted for them. They won´t forget that never!

Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?

With the backing and support of private companies, we could take over this learning program to schools in Colombia in the next five years. We would achieve impact to the children, raising consciousness, creating emotional connections with nature and consciousness for the importance of conserving our environment. With this program we could also create new forest reserves created by children. Everyday and every time we throw away more PET bottles, so we must find a solution for reuse, and this would be a good strategy to encourage creativity with recycling.

Sustainability

Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?

Most of parents like doing great birthday parties for their children and hire entertainment for those events. This program Initially provide learning and entertainment for children's parties through our company, called Pops Recreación, a company of logistic and animation for parties, where children have fun and also learn about recycling and ecology and adopted a plant to take home.

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

This project uses the fun and learning platform of Pops Recreación for children with the purpose that they voluntarily participate in recycling and adoption activities of plants to ensure the reforestation of the areas surrounding the city. To finance this project we take advantage of the market of entertainment services hired for the parents for children's parties. We have not found a project with similar qualities.

Team

Founding Story

The company started with entertainment facilities for children's parties, but the passion of its owner, Jhonnatan Martinez, for ecology and recycling led him to start experimenting with teaching children to care for the plants. Showing a plant during a party, we saw that the kids wanted take her home to care for it. Later, we began to bring plants to give them away in children's parties. Nowadays the project is refined and children make the pots with PET bottles and take the plant home to take care of them.

Team

At this time the project is being implemented by animators for children's parties of Pops Recreación. They are trained on recycling and ecology and work part time sharing their obligations with other jobs or studies. To ensure the growth of the project is necessary to have a permanent staff trained in ecology and recycling.

File attachments:

b4.pdf

Background

Please confirm how you heard about the Unilever Awards:

Unilever facebook page

Please confirm your role in the initiative (eg Founder/co-Founder) and your organisational title:

I am the founder and manager of the company

Which of the 8 UN Global Goals (Sustainable Development Goals) pre-selected for this competition does your solution relate most closely to? [select all that apply]

Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action.

Leadership and the Unilever Awards

Please provide examples of any previous entrepreneurial initiatives you have pioneered.

The company Pops Recreación has eight years of experience in entertainment and fun for children. We have a team of qualified and willing to disseminate the project to the people. We also have a database of family that we may initially contact. Many companies and the government of our country are supporting initiatives of social responsibility that can be used to enforce this project.

Beyond your existing team, who else are you working with to achieve your objectives, eg partners, advisors, mentors?

We want to work with foundations that have environmental targets to improve about methods and the lessons we can give to the children. We also want to work with primary school teachers, who can help spread the importance about learning recycle and ecology in a fun way.