Who Participates?

Student participants are adolescents (12-19 years old) who live in high-crime, high-unemployment peripheral communities in Greater Sao Paulo. They come from low-income families, with parents with an average of only four years of schooling and who lack resources to provide extra-curricular activities and books to their children. Since there are no public incentives to recruit top professionals for peripheral public schools, participants attend public schools that are plagued by chronic problems of teachers’ absenteeism and high staff turnover vandalism, chronic noise and inadequate infrastructure, and poor teaching.

A needs assessment conducted by our program showed that 82% of participants were reading at levels below those expected for their grades and almost 90% reported not knowing how to access public libraries. By June 2005, only six of the 21 participating public schools had a school library, and only one had a laboratory with equipment for science classes. Most students are not used to leaving their neighborhoods, partially due to their fear of not fitting-in. This self-imposed social exclusion becomes another serious obstacle for them to access work or educational opportunities, that tend to be located in more central, affluent regions. When they participate in the Reading Circles, they challenge this fear and learn to circulate in the metropolis, access new cultural resources and develop friendships and alliances with youth and adults from other peripheral and non-peripheral neighborhoods.