The 5th and 6th grade students of the San José de Puertollano school are carrying out a service-learning project called ‘Fans of local commerce’ that tries to encourage citizens to make their purchases in the neighborhood stores and at the same time inform and reflect on the possible problems that online purchases can cause.
With initiatives like this one, students reflect on the reality we are experiencing and learn to seek information, to handle it and to develop oral expression techniques, as well as to perform a service to society: to encourage the population to buy in local stores to that we do not attend to see how they put the closure. This would have very negative effects for our town.
Due to the health situation that we are experiencing, many shops and small businesses have been affected and have problems moving forward. Therefore, the students and their teachers have considered the need to contribute their grain of sand to help these stores.
Thus, they have produced posters to carry out an awareness campaign and encourage people to approach local businesses and thus avoid, among all, the closure of many businesses that are going through a critical situation. In addition, they have compiled information from the stores in the neighborhood of 300, the area where the school is located, and from the center of Puertollano, to create a directory with the data of these businesses and to advertise them.
The students are preparing to conduct interviews with the shop owners to find out how they view this situation and how they could be helped. In addition, the students of the 2nd of the Middle Grade Training Cycle of the Center have prepared a directory of local stores to advertise them and make themselves known in other areas of Puertollano.
The student Regina Carmona has summarized the content of the project in a very specific slogan: ‘Get closer to local businesses so that you can help your people’.
In the words of another student, Paola Ruiz, “this project is very good because it benefits both the buyer and the seller and it also helps us learn that not all businesses have the same luck of having fixed sales or online commerce”.
Likewise, Agustín Luque affirms that “this project is very beneficial for the entire town because the owners of the stores benefit, therefore, we all benefit because by paying taxes, Puertollano has more resources for the town.”
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