There are water sports today that, due to economic and social contexts, promote more garbage, more waste and more unconscious consumption, as well as more individualism, more conflict and more unfair competition, than we could have imagined a decade ago.
There is an urgent need to become aware of the educational potential of the ocean and water sports for the personal, social and civic education of children and young people, future citizens and leaders.
The “BlueMind~Blue School” project aims to ensure that water sports in schools in Portugal can be equipped with two essential tools for creating value and sustainable growth in the blue economy. These tools, factors of sustainability, are (i) security and (ii) blue ethics.
In this sense, the project is organized according to these two areas of action, creating an integrated offer of added value to water sports in a school environment, and which is distinguished from the curricular offer, aiming to training young people, agents and educators for the main challenges and education opportunities in a blue economy, which is based on blue ethics, built in blue schools, promoted by blue minds.
It is proposed to do so by the creation of the itinerant training center “BlueMind”, which will persist in the post-project period like other promoter’s training centers, and by carrying out training and promotional actions “BlueMind~Blue School” in Blue Schools of mainland Portugal and in the Azores, aimed at lower and upper and secondary students, as well as a conference ” BlueMind~Blue School” for blue economy stakeholders (teachers, researchers, partners, etc.).
With an international team, the project allows the meeting of three areas of activity by individuals with recognized qualifications, namely the framing of adaptation and safety techniques in the water environment in the theories and methodologies of teaching and learning, combined with a social pedagogy for inclusion.
It also innovates in the integration of the project’s core areas, associating them in an innovative and promising way, namely in the border areas between values and inclusion, ethics and environment, safety and rescue, breathing and breath holding.
Underway during 2021, the project integrates the Programme Go Deeper of the Values University, which has successfully developed tests of concept betweeen 2019 and 2020, integrating a set of national and international strategies and with the formal participation of several key institutions, namely:
- The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG);
- The National Plan for Ethics in Sports;
- The Ocean Literacy;
- The National Strategy for Citizenship Education.
Funded by: Co-funded: Programme Operator:
