Education for the poorest children of NE Brazil

When Patronato was founded in 1989, it offered mainly tutoring services. They now run three major projects which reach out to 225 children and many more families and elderly people living in the community.

As the project explains, “Through our work, we contribute to both the formal and informal educations of the children we support at our projects. We have contributed indirectly to the 12 public schools that our students attend, enabling their families to go to work knowing their children are in good care. The local community feels more secure knowing that their children and teenagers are safe as we provide protection for them against marginalization. The students themselves feel safer, well looked-after and loved. We also contribute to the families of all these young people as they can be safe in the knowledge that they are receiving guidance and training that allows them to have a better and more balanced life.”

Over the last 12 months, Patronato has been able to further improve its service to the local community in the following ways:

1. Improved the facilities to allow more efficient and higher quality educational workshops with children, adolescents as well as the elderly and other groups within the community; 2. Rearranged the computer lab, fixed the old computers and bought new ones to increase the number of students and improve quality of lessons. 3. Increased the number of interns and volunteers to offer new workshops and therefore increased the participation of children and adolescents; 4. Created and organized the children's library which offers a welcoming environment and new research resources.

There was a direct significant improvement in the activities carried out by the teachers which consequently meant that all the families involved in these projects benefited in many ways. The project believes that when one person in the family grows, all other family members grow with them.

We want to stress that tuition in Portuguese and Maths has always been an area of great importance at Patronato since it opened in 1989, hence the importance placed on the tutoring sessions and the reason for the large number of teachers/tutors. Currently, more than 80% of the students helped by Patronato move forward to the next school grade each year.