Community Schools represent an essential step toward safeguarding Early Childhood Education for children who would otherwise not have access to this first educational level.
On the morning of April 12, the Escola Comunitária de Maivene was inaugurated. It is one of the communities that has been supported under the project "Educadores em Movimento - Uma Educação Itinerante para a Primeira Infância" (Educators on the Move - An Itinerant Education for Early Childhood).
The joyful and colourful ceremony involved the children benefiting from the Little School, their parents and /or caregivers, as well as the local authorities, among which the Directors of SDSMAS and SDEJT, José Murrona and Ernesto Macamo, respectively, as well as the Head of the Administrative Post, Ermelinda Cau, the Administrator of the District of Chibuto, Sérgio Sional Moiane, and the Head of the Locality, Lucas Alberto Macuáca.
The initiative's opening counted on a prayer by Fathers José António and Constantino Hatende. It was immediately followed by the speeches of the President of AIDGLOBAL, Susana Damasceno, who framed the construction of the Little School and its purpose within the scope of the project. This framework was followed by the intervention of Professor Antónia Barreto, who, representing the Centre for International Studies of the University Institute of Lisbon (CEI-ISCTE), a partner of the project, contextualized the importance of continuing to invest in quality Early Childhood Education.
The institutional and formal moments of this ceremony were complemented by moments of relaxation that found correspondence in the intervention of a dance group Ngalanga, a style originating in the region of Zavala in Inhambane, Mozambique, which, in ancient times, celebrated the return of warriors after a war from which they would have emerged victorious.
The Little Schools' inauguration represents, in fact, a celebration that justifies any dances that assume as a capital purpose the "tapping of the foot" for the safeguarding of an Education that reaches all girls and boys.
The ceremony that marked the institutional opening of the Little School of Maivene found its outcome with the inauguration of the infrastructures to support it, such as the shed, the tiny house and the restroom, the delivery of a Library to the Community Management Council of the Little School, which contained materials to support the activities that will be developed daily with the children who attend it.
“Educadores em Movimento – uma Educação Itinerante para a Primeira Infância” has as its main funder the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, as co-financier Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, i.p., as promoter the AIDGLOBAL, project manager, as co-promoter the Chibuto Vocational and Residential Center (CVRC), and as partners the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (IPL), its scientific-pedagogical coordinator, by the Center for International Studies of the University Institute of Lisbon (CEI – Iscte) coordinator of the anthropological component, by the District Service of Youth, Education and Technology of Chibuto (SDJET) and District Service of Health, Women and Social Action (SDSMAS) – entities that guarantee the articulation of the project with public policies.
