Pangea Project and
Universidade Católica de Petrópolis
Pangea Project:
Brazilian children: another context involving social risk
The Universidade Católica de Petrópolis and the Centro de Informática Educativa accept the invitation to participate at the Pangea Project, collaborating with other educational institutions to join young people at the different continents. These Brazilian children are 12-16 years old and live at the poor surroundings of the city of Petrópolis. Through the present project they are also developing their minds and their hearts to be prepared in sense of avoid the violence and the marginality. They intend to reveal their problems, their life and their hope.
The main orientation of the project of computers on education at the Universidade Católica de Petrópolis use computers at learning environments to allow mind and heart expressions made by the children. In spite of their age, they are able to think about the context, talking and writing about it. At this moment they are doing something meaningful to change their difficulties, changing by themselves their own ways of living. Through this work, developed by children in social risk of marginality, the Pangea Project, and the Project of Computers on Education at the Universidade Católica de Petrópolis in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, intends to reveal another side of the Brazilian social and cultural environment. These frames here presented by our children are a picture about some problems of our reality.
The children who made these frames are participating at the Project "Vem prá Casa", developed since 1998 at "Casa dos Meninos de Petrópolis". The project proposes an integrated work involving alternate education and computers tools to reflect the context the children live, inviting them to think about their cultural environment, reformulating the chances of their lifes.
These texts and pictures paint a country with problems despite of the beautiful nature we have here. The children who made these pages are painting an image of our culture, our traditions, our country and our problems. Some of them suggest other ways to build another world. Most of them are doing just a claim against the hungry, against the drugs, against the violence. Most of them perceive that the important is to have employ for their parents and avoid the delinquency.
The works are presented in sequence, as a collective history created by them. The history of their context, the history of their culture, the history of their social risk, and the history of the built hope they have at their hearts. The option to work with children at social risk is for the Project of Computers on Education at the Universidade Católica de Petrópolis, an opportunity to know a hidden face of our society, and the hidden heart of the marginality.
These studies allow us anthropological approaches, in sense of building with these children another view of their own context. Knowing their context and thinking about it they make small projects to change their situation. At least, with the hope at their hearts. The texts were preserved with the original expression they were made. We try to rescue the good things they have at their minds and work on the context, creating opportunities to conserve the natural environment, to change the violence and other social problems. That is not a complete portrait of our country, but a real face of our culture, as these children can fell it, as these children can talk about it and as these children can dream it could be.
Through the Pangea Project we dream to join all continents, searching for the same feelings, the same or divergent ideas in sense of building another human geography without bounds, without limits, but full of expectancy at the human being.
This work was applied by Janine Cristina Coutinho de Souza.
Main text and work coordination: Silvia Branco Vidal Bustamante
The Research Group of the Centro de Informática Educativa is composed by:
Coordination: Silvia Branco Vidal Bustamante
Research assistants:Janine Cristina Coutinho de Souza, Mara Carneiro de Souza Noel, Frederico Luis Cabral
Scientific Initiation Researchers: Antonio José dos Santos Neto, Glauco Fiorott Amorim, Marcelo Lemos, Telles Gonçalves Grillo, Cristina Stanitz Teixeira, Frederico Mendonça Motta, Luis Gustavo Ferreira da Silva, Wenderson Fani, Fernanda de Melo Pacheco, Andréa Abreu dos Santos, Viviane Almeida de Souza, Daniela Santos Alves