SOCIAL ACTION PROJECTS

Youth Energy Channeled Towards Transformative Education

Social Action and Volunteer Work has among its objectives mobilizing and involving the whole school community in several actions that show solidarity. These actions can vary from fundraisers, public awareness campaigns to volunteer work.  Many social action projects are interdisciplinary curricular projects.

Preschool - Year 1 students’ participation is indirect, that is, they do not organize campaigns, but they can contribute by donating the requested items with their parents’ help.

The Year 2 classes start organizing social action projects by assembling holiday  gift bags for the children at Aconchego Daycare Center (one of the initiatives of APAF, a non-profit organization founded and run by Stance Dual faculty and parents).  This social action project has been integrated into an interdisciplinary project focused on the study of children’s rights in history and the idea of donating time and talent in financial education. 

 

Year 3 is responsible for the Book Campaign, which usually happens in April, when we honor Monteiro Lobato’s birthday. The intention is to offer the donated books to charitable institutions in São Paulo, as well as foster a used book exchange amongst Stance Dual students and staff. The idea behind the book exchange is based on the principles of a solidarity economy: replacing profit, accumulation and competition by solidarity and cooperation; valuing work, knowledge and human creativity and not capital and its propriety.

Among the campaigns held by Year 4, the most important are the toy and the milk campaigns.  Students raise the Stance Dual community’s awareness for the need to donate gently used toys and milk to charitable institutions.

Year 5 students are responsible for many campaigns, involving students, parents and staff in an effort to gather donations to help those in need and raise awareness about important social and environmental issues at the same time. 

In partnership with Associação Laramara, Year 6 students learn about the needs of the visually impaired in our city and propose several actions to meet some of those needs.  Based on the fundraising efforts of students throughout the year, there have been significant donations of Braille assistive devices.  Additionally, students have written letters to local authorities in order to call their attention to the importance of installing and maintaining acoustic traffic lights aimed at improving security and therefore improving the quality of life of the visually impaired. 

Year 7 focuses on special needs, particularly on hearing disabilities and on the importance of respecting and embracing diversity.  Contextualized within an interdisciplinary curricular project, and in partnership with the Escola Municipal Especial de Ensino Fundamental Helen Keller, the students learn about hearing impairments and how people with hearing impairments live in a hearing society.  They are provided with the opportunity to get to know hearing-impaired children and teenagers during a visit to their school to learn about deaf culture and Brazilian sign language and their visit to our school at two different moments over the course of the year.  

In Year 8 students learn about aging in an interdisciplinary curricular project involving a visit to the Associação Vicentina de Vila Mascote Nursing Home.  Over the course of two visits, students assess the residents’ needs and make a plan of action of how to make a meaningful contribution to those living there.  At times, the focus is on entertainment and leisure activities, while at other times it is on infrastructure projects to improve the physical space of the nursing home, utilizing the funds raised over the year by students. The encounter between generations was very touching and permeated with respect and fraternity, values we hold in our institution.  

Year 9’s social action project focuses on raising awareness to the topic of special needs involving physical disabilities and the role of sports in the recovery process. Contextualized within an interdisciplinary curricular project, and in partnership with ADD, Associação Desportiva para Deficientes, students have the opportunity to visit the Brazilian Paralympic Center, a Latin American center of reference for para-olympic sports, with the chance to talk and play with athletes from the youth wheelchair basketball team, using wheelchairs from the institution.  They also hear a lecture from a para-olympic athlete, who shares his/her story and his/her challenges with them.

Throughout all of these projects students develop a value for social action.  Our school, as a center for the development of citizenship, has the following objectives in its social action projects:

• To contemplate the social and communitarian dimension of education.

• To strengthen new ways for the students to participate and consolidate what already existing projects.

• To provide a free and autonomous place for discussion, thought and the proposal of action.

• To provide experiences that contribute toward building bonds with people and realities diverse from their own.

• To promote attitudes and values that favor respect toward individual differences, solidarity and autonomy of action.