Empowering students to build upon the past into a greener future
Event Overview
- Prize Category: Environmental Action
- Format: Panel discussion
- Country: Argentina
- Languages: Streamed live in English with automated captions in Arabic, English, French, Filipino, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Serbian, and Spanish.
- Learn more about the Top Ten Shortlisted Schools in the Environmental Action category on the World’s Best School Prizes website.
Watch on-demand
World Education Week 2022 is streaming across social media. We will embed a live stream on this page before the event begins. We are making the live stream available directly on this page alongside the Spf.io platform. Spf.io is one of our partner organisations, and their all-in-one multilingual translation and accessibility platform is embedded and linked below. You can access a range of accessibility features from the menu in the Spf.io player.

About the school
Technical School Nº 8 “Paula Albarracín de Sarmiento”, a state school in Buenos Aires City, Argentina, sits next to “Olimpo”. This site was once a clandestine detention centre used by the former military government in Argentina. The school is reclaiming this once-feared site and reconnecting it with the community, creating life through a community garden and a memorial telling the stories of the victims.
This is one of several environmental and social projects run by the school, which specialises in providing an education where the social and chemical sciences coexist. Most of its students come from lower-income backgrounds and live in settlements with poor access to clean drinking water, healthy food and heating.
The school has helped address some of these issues through the Green Schools Programme initiated by the Ministry of Education of the Buenos Aires City Government. Leading the work through a network of schools in the community, it has developed projects to study the nutritional and environmental benefits of solar cookers and ovens. The school set up an organic community garden, and, in 2017, chemistry students began to make their own hydroponic nutrients, eventually led the school to become a supplier for more than 50 schools and community institutions, contributing to the development of different community gardens in small spaces in the city. A year later, students developed aquaponic crops as an alternative to organic farming.
Join us as we showcase our school’s environmental and social projects.
Speakers
Moderator: Lic. Noelia G. Colangelo
Sociologist and Social Investigator from Buenos Aires University and a member of The Childhood, Education and Adolescence Commission from Consejo de Profesionales de Sociología. Studied English in Liceo Cultural Britanico. Has been working as an English teacher since 2000. Actually is working in Instituto La Candelaria and Centro Cultural San Francisco Javier.
Speaker 1: Lic. Federico P. Colombo
Degree in Biological Sciences from Exact and Natural Sciences – Buenos Aires University
Teacher and Director of secondary school studies. Doctoral candidate in biological chemistry from Exact and Natural Sciences – Buenos Aires University. Biology Teacher, Technology Education and the Health and Environment Workshop of the La Candelaria Institute. Professor of biology of Technical School N° 8 DE 13 “Paula Albarracín de Sarmiento”. The referent of several projects of environmental education, with prizes in educational innovation.
Speaker 2: Nelida Juana Portillo
History teacher