Centros comunitários, fazendo a diferença

Along with attending meetings with Sarah and Portuguese lessons, for the past two weeks we’ve been working at Emaus’ Casa do Saber. There they run a sort of afterschool program for the children to get help with their homework, as well as improve on other subjects like math and portuguese. The children are split up into two classrooms based on their ages, 6-12 and 13-16. Along with homework help, the children are provided with snacks and access to books and computers. During our first week of observation, one of the girls had asked me to help her with her history homework. She had to read two pages and answer questions related to the text. Mind you this is all in Portuguese, a language I am still learning. I made her read the text out loud and we went through the questions together. Honestly, at this point Portuguese is easy to understand when it’s written down, but I can’t say the same when it’s spoken.

Besides from helping them with their homework, we are also responsible for teaching them the universal language of MATH! Numbers have the same meaning in every language, who knew (sarcasm). Teaching math in a different language can be difficult at times but the great thing about kids is that they are patient. Our lesson plan consists of teaching the younger group math and the older children English. For the first English lesson with the older group, we had planned to teach them the words of English songs they knew. We first made them listen to the song and write down any words they recognized. “Love” seemed to be the most recognizable word. We gave them the lyrics to sing along and a breakdown of the meaning in Portuguese. I think whenever I hear Bob Marley’s “Is this love,” I will forever think of that first English class, since we played the song repeatedly.

On a personal note...

Many aspects of Casa do Saber reminds me of my childhood growing up in Ottawa’s Debra Dynes neighbourhood, a low-income community (by Canadian standards of course). At one point in time the neighbourhood had gained the reputation for being “Ottawa’s primary drive-in drug store.” The Debra Dynes Family House was opened in 1995, shortly after my family moved to Canada and into this community. Simply known as the Family House, this community centre served the community by providing services such as food banks, computer classes, English classes, summer camps, and homework clubs, just to name a few. Considering the fact that the family house was located right beside my house (we literally shared a wall with them), I grew up going to the homework club, attending day and summer camp, and taking part in community activities. I eventually started doing volunteer work and working in the same day camp programs I used to go to when I was younger.

I can reflect back and see that I wouldn’t have had some of the childhood experiences I had without the Family House and I am very much grateful to the dedicated people of Debra Dynes Family House. From my personal experience, such community centres do have a positive impact on the communities they are meant to improve.  Emaus is one such community center working towards improving the Pirambu neighbourhood.