Quality Education for 5,200 Brazilian Children

Well over half of the Brazilian population is descended from African and Indigenous peoples but teaching about their history and society in schools only became obligatory for the former in 2003 and the latter in 2008. As such, very few public school teachers know how to deliver teaching in these subjects nor are there many text books which is why we have chosen to focus on these areas for the stories we deliver to the children in schools. As the young reading mediators also have almost no knowledge, we give a lot of training for them to deliver the project with quality.

We interviewed all three of them and here are some snippets: 

“The stories about Africa are really great, I'm learning more about African culture and I'm able to share some of what I learn with the children. I'm learning a lot about the history of things and how and where they came from, and especially from great figures like Nelson Mandela, who I have particularly become a big fan of his history, and how a single person can become so important to an entire country." - Ryan.

“Telling stories and learning about Africa is being a totally new and very gratifying experience, I'm really enjoying it, because I believe it's very important for us to pass on this knowledge about a little bit of our roots as well, because Brazil comes down to this briefly: diversity; and the work we do with children, bringing stories inspired by events that took place in several countries on the African continent or in theories and versions to explain why things are, etc., all of this activates and stimulates creativity, knowledge and the imagination of these children, in addition to helping them to have this basic notion of knowledge about the African continent." - Emily

“I think it's really cool that kids are interested in African culture and they're always surprised that there's always a story to explain everything. We always try to bring African books and every Thursday we tell a story and it varies between a week about Africa and a week about Brazilian indigenous culture. What I learned the most from my days here in the project is that Africana culture is very rich and little explored, and children always think it's cool and are very interested in something new that is so different." - Pedro.

Reading the interviews inspires us to cpontinue with the focus we have, confident of its importance to the children and young people.

Along with Stephanie, we also have three new reading mediators at the project who passed through a rigorous selection process with over 50 candidates. One of them is Ryan, a 17 year old young man just starting the last year of high school and who is, in his words, returning to ACER: "I wanted to become part of this project in order to develop my independence and also help out at home (financially) and especially to return to ACER which held an important and central place in my childhood."

He has very much enjoyed coming back to our community centre and meeting up with staff he has known before, now as a colleague. After doing their initial training, the group had started giving their first story telling sessions at our community centre (as schools remain closed due to the pandemic) when, due to the worsening Covid situation, ACER had to close its centre and once again we have had to move online. This, for Ryan, has been extremely challenging "the most difficult thing for me has been having to film sessions from home. I have never done this before and am not comfortable with cameras, but I have insisted and gradually I am getting there!"

There has however been a new opportunity which he has enjoyed much more; with the centre closed, all the staff and youth monitors have gone out to the community to the homes of the families to interview them on their doorsteps with rigorous sanitary care being taken. In  Ryan's words "I have really enjoyed doing the survey, I went to about 10 houses which are not far from where I live but with people I didn't know before. The people received us really well and were pleased to reply to all the questions we asked and for me it was nice to know that they live (really challenging) lives very similar to me, no better, no worse."

So even with unexpected challenges, we are still finding new ways to help develop the young men and women from the project and better prepare them for adult life and the different jobs they will have one day.