Launch week, day two: Instituto Leão do Mar focuses on Santos | OneFootball

Santos FC began the second day of the launch of the Leão do Mar Institute this Tuesday (22) with a tree-planting event in the Vila Belmiro neighborhood of Santos. The event inaugurated a green roundabout on Rua Mariz e Barros, in the presence of Santos FC vice-president Fernando Bonavides and administrative manager Luiz Fernando Vella, deputy mayor Audrey Kleys, ambassador Christiane Torloni, Leão do Mar Institute finance director Antilia Reis, and the secretary of Environment, Urban Development and Sustainability, Glaucus Renzo. Female and male youth academy athletes, the Club’s organized supporter groups, students from UME Professora Emília Maria Reis, and mascots Leo and Baleião were also present.

“The inauguration of the Leão do Mar Institute is a major step for Santos FC. This week highlights our commitment to social and environmental responsibility, and bringing all of this together with the Club’s city, in a space so close to our stadium, in the Vila Belmiro neighborhood, also shows the value we place on the community around us that lives Santos FC day by day. Here we have residents, children, and wildlife that will be positively affected by actions like this,” said Luiz Fernando Vella, administrative manager of Santos FC.

“This initiative makes us see life in a different way, telling everyone: ‘You are also part of society and need to take responsibility for caring for the environment.’ We do this through actions like this one, which bring society together, connect with education, and ensure it is present in the birth of new life. As a result, our students will have a greater sense of responsibility in caring for nature. As a Santos supporter, I am even prouder of our team for this social responsibility. As deputy mayor, my heart overflows with joy,” added Audrey Kleys, deputy mayor of Santos.

In addition to the tree-planting program, the Club also took part in the inauguration of a new court at UME Professora Emília Maria Reis, in front of the green roundabout, with the special presence of Eternal Idols Abel and Lalá. The school will take part in maintaining the planting site, introducing ecological education to children through contact with nature.

“The children will grow together with the plants. They will take care of this space, which will be a small pocket orchard. If this attitude is nurtured, it grows like that bean seed we used to plant at school. We have lost that sense of wonder, and we want to recover it. But only education can do that. The idea of forest citizenship says that nature is not competitive, but cooperative — if one plant is attacked, all of them are at risk as well. So there is a whole network protecting that space, and that is a lesson for all of us,” said Christiane Torloni, ambassador of the Leão do Mar Institute.

Glaucus Renzo, Santos’s secretary of Environment, Urban Development and Sustainability, also highlighted the importance of the initiative. “The Institute is an arm that represents society. These social actions at its launch already demonstrate that, and the image of Santos FC amplifies everything. It gives scale to what we see as our shared mission: reintroducing nature into the city. Santos is highly urbanized and vertical, and it needs more trees and more Atlantic Forest. With this planting, we removed asphalt and returned a permeable area to the city, enriching life for everyone,”

(Photos: Raul Baretta/Santos FC)

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.