Sofas for the student lounge, bicycle racks or microwave ovens are some of the winning projects from the Participatory Budget (PB) Schools of Faro, whose results were announced this Thursday, April 20, at the Regional Museum of the Algarve.
As in previous editions, the Municipality of Faro allocated 10 thousand euros to the PB Schools, which will be distributed by the Pinheiro e Rosa School Group (2500 euros), Montenegro School Group (750 euros), Tomás Cabreira School Group (3250 euros ), João de Deus School Group (2500 euros) and D. Afonso III School Group (750 euros).
During the awards ceremony, Rogério Bacalhau, mayor of Faro, highlighted the importance of young people's participation and stressed that «unfortunately we do not have a culture of participation and this is seen by the number of people who show up when we promote certain types of actions».
For this reason, «having projects from schools in the municipality here is, for us, very rewarding», reinforced the mayor.
Carlos Luís, director of the João de Deus School Group, highlighted that this is «an initiative that will create roots of habits in our population, in a sector and in an area where we are highly deficient».
For the professor, «encouraging collective and civic participation and, at the same time, creating habits that lead people to have a sense of what the collective and democracy is, is important».
Although work is being done in this grouping in this direction, Carlos Luís says that it continues to be noted «that there is a very large deficit compared to the schools in the North, for example».
According to this official, data on student participation in his school «are practically all far below the groupings in the North. This is significant and I think it is something that we all need to be concerned about and that deserves reflection».
Although, over the three editions, participation in the Participatory Budget has been growing, Rogério Bacalhau confessed to journalists that the objective is to have even more.
NOTE: Title corrected on April 24th, at 11:00 am. The previous title misled readers, for which we apologize.
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