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Education is undoubtedly one of the main concerns of a
company whose activity is carried out in the countryside,
especially in a poor and complex region.
In 1977, the situation at Fazenda Tamanduá with regard to
schooling was very precarious: Dona Luiza, without formal
education but with a lot of good will, taught the boys and
girls how to read and write in her own home, at the foot of
the hill called Tamanduá. School materials were almost
non-existent, the salary was tiny and the results were also
insignificant. Middle school or secondary education? Not a
chance! |
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Many foreigners are tempted to “reinvent the wheel”,
creating a new school with imported models, often of
doubtful efficiency. However, as we were already well
adapted to Brazil, our analysis led us to seek to work
hand in hand with those responsible for municipal
education, and this brought positive results very quickly:
thanks to World Bank financing, via the credit line called
“Polonordeste”, Fazenda Tamanduá received a model school
in return for its donation of a plot of land to the
Municipality of Santa Terezinha. An important step taken!
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Our
valorous
teachers |
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Still missing
were good-quality teaching, students’ and teachers’ materials,
as well as the school lunch. Today, all this has come true
thanks to the joint efforts of the MUNICIPALITY, the teachers,
the students’ parents and our own! Naturally, the materials
don’t always arrive in time, maintenance work on the school
takes a long time, or the school lunch does not turn up! There
are also problems with certain boys who do not take school
seriously and need double care...
But everything ends up well. In fact, in the Municipality of
Santa Terezinha, Ms. Ângela Lacerda, the Education Secretary,
Joana D’Arc, the supervisor and Rosângela, the school guidance
counselor, treat the Fazenda Tamanduá community with total
care and attention.
For further details, we will quote Silvânia Ferreira Vicente
(21 years old), who works in the office during the day and
studies in the evening: |
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“The children living at Fazenda Tamanduá have priority in
schooling. On the farm itself, there is a Municipal School
for the pre-primary class and up to the 4th grade of
primary school. The building comprises two classrooms, two
toilets, a kitchen, a store-room, a mini-library and a
leisure area for the children to have their meal, in
addition to a house for the teacher. Teaching has been
improving greatly from year to year, and the school
already has trained teachers with university degrees.
In one of the classrooms, the 13 pupils in the pre-primary
class are taught by Ms. Joelma, who lives on the farm. In
the other classroom, the class includes 16 students (three
in the 1st grade, four in 2nd, seven
in 3rd and two in 4th) who are
taught by Ms. Maria do Carmo, who lives in the house
within the School premises. |
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Fazenda
Tamandua´s school pupils |
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Bus
picking up the students |
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At the end of this phase, the children have to travel to
nearby towns.
The Santa Terezinha Town Hall has a school bus that
collects the children at the roadside, 3 kilometers away
from the farm headquarters. A vehicle belonging to the
farm itself takes the students there and back.
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At noon, 14 students go to the town of Santa Terezinha, where
they study in classes from 5th to 8th
grades (Basic School), and another four go to the town of
Patos, where they are concluding Secondary School, studying at
prep-schools for the University entrance exams, or working at
technical courses. They return at 6:00 p.m. From 6:00 p.m. to
midnight, another 15 students go to Patos to attend Middle
School (four years) and Secondary School (three years).
The students doing evening courses work during the day. Of
course, it is not easy to study after a full day’s work, not
counting the journey to school and back, which is very tiring…
But with a lot of effort and courage, facing this long day
every day, there will be victory! Not only the children have
access to education: both young people and adults who did not
learn to read and write when they were children have access to
a federal project, the Solidary Literacy Course. A class of 15
students, of all ages, recently started daily classes – from
7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., for six months – with Ms. Maria do
Carmo.” |
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So even if the problems have not all been solved, we can say
that we are on the right track and that the concern for
education, so important in everyone’s life, is a fact at
Fazenda Tamanduá. |
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We recently received a committee of about 30 people from a land
settlement program in the Mossoró region of the neighboring
State of Rio Grande do Norte. The visit was organized by Mr.
Roberto Brígido, President of the Biodynamic Association of the
North-East, who has worked for many years as an organic and
biodynamic consultant for the firm “Mil Folhas”. The
participants came from the Favela and Mulunguzinho Settlement
Projects. The initial surprise was the fact that most of the
visitors were women, who were well-informed and active, and very
much aware of the challenges to be overcome. One of the groups,
called “Women Determined to Win” and headed by “Neguinha”, has a
collective project to produce irrigated vegetables, which are
successfully sold in Mossoró. One wonders if women of Rio Grande
do Norte could be favored by the fame of those of Paraíba, who
are known as “macho women, yes sir!”
The day-long
visit to the farm enabled us to illustrate the notion of
“farming organism”. The diversification of agricultural and
livestock activities at Fazenda Tamanduá, and the
interdependence and integration of these activities in a global
vision, enabled each of the visitors to obtain valuable
information on the biodynamic production and handling systems
adopted at the farm, in relation to the mango trees, silage, hay
and cotton, as well as the cattle and goat raising activities,
and finally bee-keeping. Precise, penetrating questions were
answered by all of the farm’s team (Paula, Manoel, Marcelo,
Flavio, Alan and Pierre).
Once again, despite the differences among the participants, the
solidarity of the big organic family was evident, everyone
showing the same environmental and social concerns! |
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