08/17/10 by Aprender Team | Blog | No Comments »
Our team were finally re-united in Uberlandia, a city Aprender has visited on many occasions but only as a transit point. Our strategy is to find a local church we can work with, who understands and supports our objectives and who has good community networks. ‘Missao Sal da Terra’ has it’s roots in local mission and is the charity that has invited Phil and the family to work with them and helped with the visa. Their HQ is Uberlandia and so we were able to make contact with Pastor Vivaldo and Pastor Gilberto who have been fantastic.
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06/01/10 by Aprender Team | Who we are | No Comments »
Aprender is the Portuguese verb ‘To Learn’. It’s what we’re all about – to learn from each other, for the benefit of the teaching profession and for the good of the thousands of young people we have the honour and opportunity to nurture and know.
Aprender is a family of people involved in the development of education. We are an NGO devoted to sharing best practice and work in partnership with local, regional, State and National Government in education strategy and organisation.
Aprender began in 2000 following a life-changing holiday in Brazil. The idea planted then has grown into the only overseas NGO working with state schools in Brazil to help young people move out of poverty. While staying with a family during the holiday, Phil Hawkins, Director of Aprender, got talking with the teenagers in the home about their school. An invitation followed to visit and that was the event that proved to be ‘the moment’ when the vision for Aprender was born. Huge class sizes, poor conditions, a demoralised workforce – often not paid, often in class in the day and waiting on tables in the evening. Teenagers under huge stress- poor education prospects resulting in little chance of a job and so the poverty cycle continues. Just how could we help? Partnership was the key. By careful research, pilots and lots of conversations with students, teachers and government officials we, together, were able to begin to understand the way forward. We needed to provide opportunities to change the students experience in the classroom. More variety, less passivity. More colour, less greyscale. By trial and error over a 5-year period, we began to build a resource pack that was able to deliver results in whatever local context we found ourselves. Teachers changing the way they taught. Learners changing the way they learnt. The sense of togetherness and the chance to excel against the odds. No instant fixes but the beginning of a journey, no dependency but liberation. The Aprender project continues to grow, evolve and teach everyone involved new ways of thinking not just about the learning environment, but about ourselves too.
Our aim is to tackle poverty with justice and compassion; to empower and restore poor communities.
We give assistance where it’s needed, not on the basis of race, creed, nationality or gender.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Why we're here | No Comments »
Brazil is an amazing country. Pelé, Robinho, Kaká, Rio’s Copacabana beach, Bossa Nova, the mighty River Amazon, pink dolphins, anacondas, macaws and surrounding rainforest. Brazilians are warm, Creative, disarmingly informal and totally family-centric. Brazilian Portuguese is lilting and soft and has been described as sounding like ‘Sean Connery speaking Italian’. Visit Brazil and you will always want to return. This world’s fourth largest democracy in the ascendency- it was one of the last countries into recession in 2008 and one of the first out. Football’s World Cup and the Olympic Games will move to Brazil over this next decade. And yet it is also a country deeply divided:
- Brazil has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth of any country. The wealthiest 10% of people do 48% of consumer shopping (compared to the USA, the top 10% buy 30.5% of shopping)
- 50% of Brazilians attended school for less than 2 years.
- Private Universities account for 75% of undergraduate places.
- 25% of people over the age of 10 are illiterate.
- Only 1 in 3 who enter school finish Year 7.
State education is poor. Brazilian parents will work every hour of the day if it means they can get their children into a private school. Once there, smaller class sizes, better conditions and better pay for higher quality teaching means that young people have a chance of making it to University, and with that comes the real chance of a good job, higher salary and moving into the emerging middle classes. In the state school system, very few students make the grade. Large class sizes, severe vandalism, under-qualified teachers, poor behaviour, disaffection and the knowledge that you are not going to make the grade makes the educational outcomes for young people bleak.
Aprender’s vision is to see young people move out of poverty through receiving a higher quality education. We will learn lessons from both staff and students along the way and will be able to share these and build best practice.
In essence, we will ‘learn together’ by being together.
The Brazilian government have invested huge resources so that every child in the country has a place in a school. Having largely achieved this momentous target, their next aim is to improve the quality of education in their schools. Aprender’s main aim is to work with the government in achieving this goal.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Director. Phil is Deputy Headteacher of a successful 1100 student secondary school in Croydon, London, UK. He has 20 years teaching experience in curriculum design, teaching and learning, behaviour management and continuing professional development. He has extensive experience of building educational partnerships with schools in Brazil, Thailand, Singapore and South Africa.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Ben is the Head of Technology of a heavily over-subscribed secondary school in Weybridge, near London, UK. He is a specialist in school-business partnerships and has a strong track record of resourcing schools through building relationships with commercial enterprises.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Emma is a graduate in primary education and teaches in a school near Kingston-Upon-Thames, London, UK. She has visited Brazil and has aided the development of Aprender with her research into the field of primary education.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Neil is a Director of a Consultancy Service operating in the field of NGO development both in the UK and further afield. He has extensive experience of a wide range of charitable trusts and is currently an executive trustee on a number of key NGO boards.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Andy has a strong track record of development in the Youthwork sector. He currently heads the Youth Café movement in the UK which targets vulnerable young people through offering advice, schoolwork support and a range of resources and services as part of a partnership between local schools, youth networks and local support agencies.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Keith has extensive experience in the accounting and financial services sector. He also brings with him a background in charitable trusts and governance.
05/18/10 by Aprender Team | Meet the team | No Comments »
Gareth lives in Surrey, UK, and is Head of Corporate Finance for Anglo American plc, one of the world’s largest diversified mining companies, with significant operations in Brazil, Chile, South Africa and Australia. Gareth qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers & Lybrand, and held senior finance roles with The BOC Group plc and Linde AG, before joining Anglo American in 2008. He has also served on the Methodist Church Central Finance Board’s Joint Advisory Committee on the Ethics of Investment.
