Andrea Ventoso - Andrea Ventoso

Hello everybody!

I am the Country Coordinator from Uruguay and I was named in this position in 2009 but I have been linked to the Program since 1995 when the bilateral agreement was signed with my office, the National Directorate of Environment in the Ministry of Housing, Land Planning and Environment (now Ministry of Environment, since June 2020).

Also in 2011 my partners in the region nominated me to be the representative of the Latin American and Caribbean Region to the GIAC committee, a task performed for two years (2011-2013) and from 2014 to 2020 I was chosen for the Evaluation Working Group for two consecutive terms.

Every year since I am the Coordinator, I try to organize at least one workshop for school teachers and Biology, Chemistry and Geography teachers of high school, and primary school meeting the needs of science education and environment at school, since the program is not inserted in the curricula in a formal way. Our experience has been very positive since that this year we have requirements from three different locations in the country to organize GLOBE workshops, and we hope to be able to address all of them!

These two last years have been particularly special since COVID has imposed new conditions of work to schools and ourselves so we have improved the contact with teachers through webinars, virtual workshops, specific campaigns such the observation of butterflies and the atmospheric variables, and visits to schools that allowed to work nearer teaches and suppor their work side by side with lessons, instruments and observations in situ.

For this year we hope to reach more school with this methodology as it probed to be very effective and teachers and students like this kind of doing science "hands on".