Webinar / Positive youth development in schools: an approach from Lisbon and Hong Kong
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How can schools create opportunities for children in order to cope with their human development and daily challenges? How can school curricula go from theory to practice and integrate a responsible behavior approach? Today children have many non-academic needs that affect their growth and are not consistently approached by school programmes. Our education systems worldwide do not integrate enough human development aspects that have a permanent impact in our youngsters’ lives.
This webinar will host two investigations carried out by researchers in Lisbon and Hong Kong aiming at understanding two educational local contexts, how they impact youth development and how things can be done better. With a practical focus, the webinar will present these investigations based on two specific projects that are currently carried out in schools of both cities.
Stone Soup will be carbon neutral by 2030
December 11th 2019. Today Stone Soup has taken an important step. We have committed to be carbon neutral by 2030, 20 years ahead of the Paris Agreement!
At COP25 in Madrid we have committed together with other 531 B Corporations to accelerate the reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions to reach a 1.5 degree trajectory leading to net zero by the year 2030.
These companies are part of the global community of Certified B Corporations, businesses that meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and legal accountability. There are over 3,000 B Corps in the world, hailing from more than 70 countries and 150 industries, harnessing the power of business to solve major social and environmental challenges facing the world today, including the climate crisis.
This commitment to significant carbon reduction leading to a net zero future by 2030 is part of the most accelerated climate action effort by a large constituency of businesses in the world. It demonstrates true leadership in a time of severe environmental and economic unrest and uncertainty.
Stone Soup is a certified B Corporation since 2016. In 2018 and 2019, this vocation of improvement, working standards and engagement with our clients - among others - have been recognised by B Lab who has named Stone Soup, twice, as one of the Best B Corps for the World in the Customers category.
Ensuring every dog has his day! Project with Guide Dog School for the Blind (ABAADV)
Stone Soup Consulting was commissioned to partner with ABAADV, an association in Portugal providing Guide Dog's for the Blind. The project developed the training programme needed to deliver additional service dogs to people in need. It also enabled the co-creation of the social impact evaluation system related to this programme.
The Guide Dog School for the Blind (ABAADV) is based in Chão do Vento, in the Municipality of Mortágua, Viseu, Portugal. The initial scope of the association is the education of guide dogs for blind people. It was founded in 1999 and is the only organisation of it's type working in this area in Portugal.
Each year, ABAADV delivers an average of 16 trained guide dogs to blind people. However, ABAADV has to start the process with a much larger number of dogs - on average about 25 dogs a year, to ensure enough candidate dogs pass the test and get selected as guide dogs. When the dogs are 3 months old, they are sent to host families for 2 years. In the second year of the programme, dogs spend weekdays training at the school and the weekend with their families. Evaluated every 3 months, not all dogs have the characteristics required to become guide dogs. Therefore, there are approx. 9 dogs left each year, who have not made the final cut for selection as guide dogs.
“This research helps enlighten what responsible behaviour is, what it can be throughout the school years and how to promote it”
Nuno Archer wins the Stone Soup Award 2019 with the research “Psychosocial development and student engagement in school: a study in basic and secondary education”
1. This year the Stone Soup Award focused on projects that researched “new educational models with a positive impact on responsible behaviour”. Could you tell us what is your project about?
Thank you very much for this award. I feel especially happy because what won the award was the importance of the research theme. Its main goal is to deepen what we know about the relation between personal and social development and the school as an increasingly important context for the growth of children and young people.
To better explore the concept of development, the project is supported on the theoretical strength of Erikson’s classical Psychosocial Theory and its optimistic stance of permanent growth throughout the life span. This approach is complemented with the 5 Cs model (connection, confidence, character, competence and caring), plus one C for contribution. This model emerges from the work of Richard Lerner and colleagues, in the line of Positive Youth Development.
To account for the role of school in development, the research works on the construct of Student Engagement in School. Some of the renewed enthusiasm that this construct in gaining in Portugal (visible in research, international studies and congresses), is linked to the work of Feliciano Henriques Veiga, to whom I thank the inspiring work and the quality and close guidance as adviser of this research
BLab 2019 Honoree: Best for the World: Customers
We are thrilled to be recognized for the second time as being among the companies creating the most positive overall impact on its customers based on an independent, comprehensive assessment administered by the nonprofit B Lab. Honorees are featured on B the Change, the digital Medium publication produced by B Lab, at https://bcorporation.net/2019-best-for-the-world-customers.
The Best For Customers list includes businesses that earned a Customer score in the top 10 percent of Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment. The full assessment measures a company's impact on its workers, community, customers and environment.To certify as B Corporations, companies like Stone Soup must complete the full assessment and have their answers verified by B Lab.
The Customer portion of the B Impact Assessment measures the impact a company has on its customers by focusing on whether a company sells products or services that promote public benefit and if those products/services are targeted toward serving underserved populations. The section also measures whether a company’s product or service is designed to solve a social or environmental issue (preserving environment, creating economic opportunity for individuals or communities, or increasing the flow of capital to purpose-driven enterprises for example).