TEEN BLOG: Helping Poor Students in My Native Brazil

Students at Centrode Educacão Infantil Municipal São Marcos school in Colatina, Espirito Santo, Brazil. (Photo from Nayahra Resende)

My mother, Geni Resende, is an immigrant from Brazil . She tells me that she cleans houses for my education. Each time she scrubs a toilet, she says she thinks of my sister and me graduating from high school and going to college – of having an opportunity she never got in Brazil .

The opportunity was never there for her because she had to financially help her parents at a very young age. She moved out at the age of 14 to work and finish high school. College was never considered, never an option.

As a child, I was reminded often that the schools in Brazil closed for months because of teacher strikes. Corruption (or maybe poverty and hunger) tempted the teachers to the point of taking the lunches designated for the students for their own purposes.

The curriculum, which everyone claimed was tougher than the United States ', was usually poorly enforced. Violence sometimes erupted, disrupting classes for weeks.

These were the experiences of my parents, aunts, uncles and all the other family members who either still reside there or are trying their luck working as dishwashers or cleaning houses in the United States .

Given my family history, when I had the opportunity this year to design my own year-long project for my Senior Seminar class at Prospect Hill Academy in Cambridge, Mass. , I chose to research education in poor Brazilian communities.

I discovered that maybe my family was not exaggerating. I learned that only 40 percent of children in Brazil who enter first grade move on to second grade.

Of those entering first grade, 17 percent reach eighth grade, and only 6.4 percent finish high school.

I found out that, surprisingly, about 800,000 students reach fourth grade without having learned to read or write.

This made me question the quality of the curriculum and the reason for the low attendance rates.

Those were only a few of the eye-opening statistics that I found.

Shockingly, I found out that the government passed very few laws regarding education. One law, passed December 24, 1996, used very vague terms such as "an increase in funds to improve general education in K-8."

Without clear language, the funds could be diverted from the students' needs and instead be used in selfish, corrupt ways by the school administration.

I could have used this project to focus on the faults of public education in Brazil . Instead, I chose to help improve it.

I found that many non-governmental organizations have stepped forward to help the schools. The Bank Bradesco has donated $210 million to help education in Brazil.

Other organizations, such as the UNICEF-supported Child and Adolescent Center in Ceara, aim more specifically at creating tutoring programs and after-school activities to remove the children from the dangers of the slums in which they live.

As I conducted my research, I felt that I needed to try to intervene as well. I began my own fundraising campaign at my high school. I chose to donate school supplies to a specific school in Colatina, Espirito Santo.

Having been warned of the ever-present corruption in Brazil , I knew that the children would be best served by sending school supplies to them directly. Any money I would raise would be used to either ship the materials or buy more school supplies, such as paint, colored pencils, notebooks and pencils. Colatina may not be the most impoverished area in Brazil, but it is where I'm from, which gives me more incentive to help.

I have mostly received donations from my own school and community but I am now looking for outside donors. My efforts may improve only one school but with help, I know that I can at least dramatically change that one elementary school.

While this fundraising initiative is happening in my own school community, I am looking for external help as well. If interested, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at Nayahra.Resende@gmail.com. I hope to send material to the school by the beginning of June.

Any contribution is useful, no matter the quantity. Any contribution could help a mother scrubbing toilets and dusting furniture, wishing for quality education in Brazil for her children.

Nayahra Resende lives in Medford, Mass., and is a senior at Prospect Hill Academy, a charter school in Cambridge. She was born in São Gabriel da Palha, Espirito Santo, in Brazil . She came to the United States when she was 5 years old. This fall, she will be a freshman at Williams College. She hopes to concentrate on English and writing.

She used numerous sources in her research of Brazilian schools, including "Why Children Reject School: Views from Seven Countries," edited by Colette Chiland and J. Gerald Young, and a UNICEF report of an address by Danny Glover and "Presidência Da República-Casa Civil Subchefia Para Assuntos Jurídicos," Ministério Da Educação. 5 Nov. 2007.

PHOTO BELOW:
The photo shows students at an elementary school in Colatina, Espirito Santo. The school is called Centro de Educacão Infantil Municipal São Marcos. (Photo from Nayahra Resende)

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source: EthnicNewz.org

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