Bahia Street provides a quality education to seventy girls (ages 8-16) from impoverished neighborhoods in Salvador, Brazil. The girls study at the Bahia Street Center for four hours a day, receiving instruction in all basic subjects, including reading, writing, math, science, history, and English. In addition to the academic program, Bahia Street provides health care, instruction on health and reproduction, art therapy, and programs working with issues of violence and inequality. Bahia Street funds transportation, uniforms, books, school materials, and nutrition in the form of two hot meals per day. The girls also attend public school for four hours a day (the normal school day in Brazil).
In its outreach program, Bahia Street provides space and assistance for community forum meetings and for local groups working against violence, poverty and inequality and for peace and social justice. We also offer literacy classes, family counseling and emergency small loans to the students’ parents and caregivers.
The Result
Bahia Street gives girls an opportunity to become leaders in the outside world as well as in their own communities. The public schools they attend are weak in academics; because our students receive additional schooling through Bahia Street, they quickly rise to the top of their public school classes and become leaders there. Other students turn to them for help and tutoring. Their public school teachers say the Bahia Street girls are an inspiration for themselves and their students. As a result, the girls gain self-confidence and leadership skills. Even the youngest girls learn to be activists and to give back to their communities and are asking for change in the public schools.
For the last three years, all of the girls who have taken their end of year exams passed with grades of eighty percent or higher. (Each year a few miss the exam due to illness or other traumatic events such as rape, murder or other violence to themselves or those they love.) This is an incredible achievement considering that nearly all of these girls are illiterate when they begin the Bahia Street program.
Bahia Street provides education classes through the equivalent of the eighth grade. At that time, the girls study to take an exam to enter a quality high school that is free for those who can pass the exam. So far, all the Bahia Street girls who have taken the exam have passed.
And now, Bahia Street’s oldest girls are reaching university age! Juliana, Daza, and Aquataluxe are all currently attending university. In January 2005, Juliana was the first to pass the Vestibular, Brazil’s challenging university entrance exam. She was also awarded one of five scholarships the university gave that year, an achievement for which she, and Bahia Street, can be very proud.
Bahia Street teaching staff and methodology
The Bahia Street Center has fourteen full and part-time staff who are all (except for the English teacher) African-Brazilian university graduates from the shantytowns or rural Bahia. This gives them a unique understanding of the issues the girls face as well as understanding the importance of the social change the Bahia Street program is effecting. Concepts of citizenship are explored through interactive classes. Classes use techniques of reflection, workshops about the girls’ health, group dynamics, videos, music, dance, art, visits to museums, libraries, monuments and historic sites — all with the objective to facilitate learning, stimulate interest and develop the cognitive perception of the children.
Bahia Street teachers have developed a curriculum they call “The Bahia Street Method” to make school studies relevant to the lives of shantytown residents. For example, the girls will study microbiology through examination of microbes in the sewer water in front of their homes. Integral to the Bahia Street program is confronting inequality of race, class and gender, and these issues are included in all aspects of the teaching program. The teachers themselves have become inspired by what they are creating, and two have begun grassroots programs in their own neighborhoods based upon the Bahia Street model.
