An exercise in citizenship and cultural preservation for Venezuelan indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Since 1967, International Literacy Day (ILD) has been celebrated around the world on September 8 to remind responsible politicians, professionals and the general public of the importance of literacy in promoting a more literate, just, peaceful and sustainable society.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): “By 2022, at least one in seven adults over the age of 15 (754 million) lacked basic literacy skills. In addition, millions of children struggle to acquire minimum levels of proficiency in reading, writing and calculation, while some 250 million children aged 6 to 18 are out of school.”
In 2024, we will approach International Literacy Day with a focus on the importance of adopting practices that consider linguistic and cultural diversity, especially in areas where several languages are spoken. This approach is particularly effective due to its cognitive, pedagogical and socio-economic benefits, thus empowering the multilingual people involved in the proposal. In this way, literacy is intended to fulfill its potential to promote mutual understanding, social cohesion and peace.
In this context and in line with this proposal for integration and education, the Fraternity – International Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), through the Indigenous Cultural and Training Centre (CCFI), promotes literacy in Brazilian Portuguese and encourages multilingualism among Venezuelan indigenous refugees who currently live in shelters in Boa Vista.
The Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM) celebrates a new edition of the Literacy course and also inaugurates the Cultural Expression Space.
One of the main challenges of this literacy course was to integrate the students’ linguistic diversity in a constructive way. The students come from different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples, speak different mother tongues, have Spanish as a second language and coexist with Portuguese, which is the official language of Brazil. In many cases, this course represented the first instance of literacy for the indigenous students, as they had not learned Spanish in Venezuela. In this edition, more than 20 students from 5 different ethnic groups took part, with a different anthropological and cultural way of relating and participating in the learning process.
In order to overcome these challenges and succeed in learning Portuguese, while preserving indigenous cultures and strengthening their linguistic identities, pedagogical strategies were adopted specifically aimed at teaching indigenous communities to integrate reading and writing skills and basic mathematical fundamentals, while exchanging words in their mother tongues.
This training was given on the CCFI’s premises by teachers from the Macunaíma Educational Center, an institution associated with the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM). The course lasted three months, with a workload of 200 hours for the students who attended daily from Monday to Friday.
In addition, the inauguration of the Cultural Expression Space created a unique space and a better structured context for carrying out an integrated educational proposal. This space arose spontaneously, on the one hand as a demand from the indigenous public itself and, on the other, as a project by Professor Alberto, an indigenous Venezuelan from the E’ñepa people. A space to pass on his language, customs and traditions to the children and young people of his community, which he had already been doing in the shelter for Venezuelan indigenous migrants.
The Education in Emergencies and Humanitarian Responses Intervention Sector felt it could offer greater support to Professor Alberto’s project and so started the Cultural Expression Space at the CCFI.
The Space for Cultural Expression ran for three months, three times a week, resulting in a very fruitful training program in which 28 children and young people between the ages of 8 and 14 took part. Ricardo Treno, humanitarian character of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), says that it was very interesting how the age stratification we are used to in traditional education was naturally overcome. In a very spontaneous way, the older children supported and encouraged the younger ones in their learning process.
Alberto told us how important it is to motivate children who are of school age and their parents to accompany them in this process and also participate in the space. He also showed us the great challenge of integration in this adaptation space, which brings together children and adolescents from different ethnic groups (mainly Warao and E’ñepa) who are in the pre-literacy and literacy stages and also attend formal municipal schools. In this sense, the CCFI’s facilities and support provided a better environment for the teaching process and created better conditions for creating a space for adapting and assessing the development of children and adolescents.
Larisse Santos, a pedagogical advisor at the Macunaíma Educational Center, told us in an interview that the literacy course also resulted in a very successful experience, in which they were able to see a great deal of progress in their knowledge of mathematics, in contrast to the difficulty in their knowledge of letters. However, as a result of this difficulty, it was possible to observe more clearly the proactivity of each ethnic group to make their contributions and thus collaborate in collective learning.
She clarified that the pedagogical practices used to teach literacy in this multilingual context focused mainly on motor and perceptual processes, to ensure that the participants received an inclusive education that valued their traditional knowledge and skills. This type of teaching places the implication of feeling and perceiving at the center of the learning process. One example he gave us was the educational proposal that the students had to try different fruits in order to be able to build greater learning from the experience.
Fátima and Rosele, teachers at the Centro Educacional Macunaíma, shared with us that, given the diversity in the age of the students on the literacy course (between 14 and 69), the aim was for everyone to learn to communicate transgenerationally and also to be able to develop in order to integrate into society, whether looking for a job or applying for retirement.
The teachers emphasized that this course was a personalized learning proposal. There were group activities and the participants were also attended to individually, so that each could have their own space to show their progress in reading and writing and receive individual corrections. With this approach, it was possible to integrate students who already knew how to do small amounts of reading with those who were just beginning to learn the alphabet and syllable formation.
At the Cultural Expression Space, the methodology focuses on literacy from the youngest to the oldest children. They practice reading, writing and how to tell what they write. In addition, among the activities, they draw pictures and make projects and try to maintain a playful approach throughout the process.
Alberto is also dedicated to spreading the word among his students about what it means to be E’ñepa, what their origins are and where they live. He tries to show his students where his people come from and where they want to go, with the aim of re-establishing their cultural identity and encouraging it to be revalued and maintained throughout the generations. The background to teaching in this project is to inculcate respect for parents and family teachings in everyday life. At the same time, this space also serves to increase the level of knowledge of the children and adolescents of the indigenous communities so that they can prepare to focus on literacy and learning Spanish and Portuguese.
Ricardo Treno points out that this Space for Cultural Expression is providing a great opportunity for the E’ñepa indigenous people to get closer to the training ground and the CCFI. Previously, the E’ñepa people had been very active in the CCFI through intercultural fairs, handicraft workshops and fundamentally practical knowledge workshops; however, they had not participated in more theoretical training or technical training.
The Cultural Expression Space marks a victory in that it manages to include and accompany the youngest members of a group who, in many cases, have no knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese and are limited in their ability to communicate with the social environment in which they currently find themselves. Ricardo also points out that Professor Alberto’s presence at the CCFI represents a fundamental and irreplaceable role in forging this bridge between indigenous languages, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as their respective traditions and cultures.
Aníbal García Medina and Eva González, two students on the literacy course, shared with us the joy of learning the alphabet in Portuguese, how to write their names, how to read and also the numbers from 1 to 100. Another classmate, Justo Tobar, told us that he was proud because he had learned the vowels, consonants and how to do some math. He shared with us that he was motivated to start another course when he finished the literacy course. He wanted to keep learning in order to improve and be able to work. He also lent himself to supporting the other colleagues who are learning with him.
“With joy, intelligence and naturalness, the children in the Cultural Expression Space unfold in the activities and through music, singing and reciting verses, the youngest show their florid and expansive expression.” This was the account given by Sarah, an official from the Education in Emergencies and Humanitarian Responses Intervention Sector assigned to the task, who also shared with us the experience of having come into contact with E’ñepa parents who, despite their difficulties in expressing themselves in Spanish and Portuguese, gladly support their children, who are now attending formal education schools. This demonstrates a big step in the process of integrating indigenous peoples into today’s society in Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil.
Larisse Santos pointed out that one of the main objectives of the literacy training was for the students to be able to communicate and integrate into the society of the place where they were living and to feel part of the country. In this way, this training proposal has contributed to the empowerment of indigenous peoples, increasing their autonomy, social participation and inclusion in the job market, and at the same time to the preservation of indigenous languages and traditional cultures. This is how Romeo, a student on the literacy course, told us that he was happy to be learning about a culture that was different to his own in Brazil. Social inclusion is a continuous process that must be carried out in society and literacy is part of this as an open door that welcomes the migratory process that the indigenous Venezuelan refugee communities in Brazil are going through.
The proposal of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM) is to continue promoting literacy and multilingualism as an exercise in citizenship and cultural preservation for the Venezuelan indigenous peoples in Brazil. As well as continuing the literacy courses, which have proved to be very fruitful learning and integration experiences, the proposal of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM) is to further develop the Cultural Expression Space. This project, together with Professor Alberto, aims to include other indigenous peoples who live in the shelters and to build a space to transmit, share and deepen the values and traditions of the original peoples.
Professor Alberto also tells us about his great motivation to continue with this initiative, which is of great importance to the children and young people, whom he has seen very motivated to continue learning, and invites institutions and people who want to support this initiative to come forward.
