The Winners of the ESD Okayama Award 2023

Okayama City and the ESD Okayama Award Steering Board are pleased to announce the winners of the ESD Okayama Award 2023: More Sustainable Schools Network of the Barcelona City Council for its project Micro-networks (Kingdom of Spain) and Wallah We Can for GreenSchool (Republic of Tunisia).

This year, 108 applications from a record number of 56 countries were accepted.  Of these, 10 finalists were selected at the first round of selection and two projects were selected as winners at the final selection.  

The ESD Okayama Award ceremony will be held as the first part of The Okayama ESD Forum at the Okayama International Center in Okayama city, Japan, on November 23rd, 2023.   The representatives of the Award winning organizations are invited to make a presentation about their projects.

The details of the two projects / organizations are as follows:

Micro-networks

More Sustainable Schools Network of the Barcelona City Council【Kingdom of Spain】

3,4,7,11,12,13,15&17

The More Sustainable Schools Network of the Barcelona City Council in Spain was created in 2001 within the framework of Barcelona’s Citizen Commitment to Sustainability to contribute towards sustainability through education and recognize schools as agents of change.  This school network is a part of the More Sustainable Barcelona Network with more than 1900 organizations, and has over 370 schools representing more than the half of the city’s educational centers as members.

The “micro-networks” started in 2011 to address specific environmental subjects at several schools at once and create a shared working space to carry out a sustainability project with the entire educational community in line with municipal plans.  Currently there are 9 micro-networks addressing the topics such as food waste, climate change, and waste prevention.  The participating schools in the micro-networks share a methodology and structure, and carry out the process at the same time promoting joint reflection, analysis of shared data and a global vision.

GreenSchool

Wallah We Can【Republic of Tunisia】

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,12,13&17

Wallah We Can, a non-profit organization, was founded to aim to warrant continuous, inclusive, and sustainable socio-economic growth in disadvantaged regions of Tunisia in 2012.

Its GreenSchool project started in 2016, with the main objective to guarantee a decent living and study environment for students.  It also focuses on the multiple benefits of a social and solidarity economy based on renewable energy and sustainable agriculture: strengthening the autonomy and resilience of workers in vulnerable areas, their families and communities, and empowering women and young people.  Currently, a pilot model has been developed on a small scale at a boarding school catering more than 570 students.  It has been transformed into a self-sustaining social enterprise that produces its own energy and food.  It has created jobs by hiring unemployed parents to cultivate and harvest the farm, and unemployed graduates as leaders at the extra-curricular clubs.  The profits are reinvested in the extracurricular clubs and the rehabilitation and upgrading of infrastructures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74NNeKkZFdM&t=10s別ウィンドウで開く
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ogP7gZBUO0&t=1s別ウィンドウで開く

【Photos by Wallah We Can】