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Hungary - 2007
Alcoa Volunteers Help Students Create Sustainable Futures
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A program created and executed by Alcoa employee volunteers in Mór, Hungary, is helping schoolchildren understand that their actions today will help create a sustainable future for themselves and others.
Called Teach Our Children to Save Our Future, the program focuses on environmental protection, healthcare and prevention, and career counseling. The idea to educate students on these sustainable issues arose from a 2003 Alcoa assessment of community needs. The program started with Alcoa volunteers giving lectures on environmental and healthcare issues to seventh and eighth grade students. This was followed by 15 employees helping teachers and students create holiday decorations using only natural, environmentally friendly materials.
The program quickly expanded in size and scope and included the following activities:
- As part of Alcoa's Week of Service activities in 2005, the Alcoa volunteers organized theoretical and practical presentations at three elementary schools by the local rescue team, ambulance team, and firefighters.
- The training topics expanded to include energy management, renewable energy sources, selective waste collection, healthy lifestyles, and healthy eating.
- Alcoa management and representatives from the local community planted the company's 25,000th tree in Mór's central park as part of the company's Ten Million Trees program. The participants also took part in collecting waste at a children's camp and its surroundings.
- In early 2006, almost 100 students completed an educational excursion that included four stations where they had to prove their knowledge of the local environment, healthcare and healthy eating, selective waste collection, and ecology. Due to its success, a similar program was conducted later in the year at a second elementary school.
- The employees planted bushes and trees and cleaned the grounds at a local elementary school, earning the school a US$3,000 ACTION grant from Alcoa Foundation.
"During the excursion, we gained new knowledge about waste segregation and learned to recognize the plants and animals that live in the Vértes Mountains," said Kitti and Georgina, students at Petőfi Sándor Elementary School. "We were very excited to arrive at each of the four stations, where the Alcoa employees were waiting for us. We now try to focus better on waste segregation, the cleanliness of our environment, and the protection of nature."
Adds Edit Bura, a teacher at the school, "The biggest benefit of the Teach Our Children to Save Our Future program is that it has contributed to the development of the children's environmental awareness. They realize they have a responsibility to save the environment and to form their own futures."
In late 2006, the program expanded to include career counseling once the Alcoa volunteers learned that low self-knowledge and self-assurance made it difficult and complicated for students to choose a career. Alcoa's psychologist created a career-orientation test that was administered to more than 180 eighth-grade students. Each received a written evaluation of his or her results to aid in career planning.
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