Approximately a hundred teachers from Acará, in Pará, participated in the closing seminar of the first training cycle of the Synapse Network in the state, making the city a pioneer in the Amazon. The event took place at Dubai Events in early November. Synapse is a social technology aimed at improving Portuguese and Mathematics teaching and learning in the literacy cycle, aligned with the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), designed to be effective in vulnerable and extremely poor regions.

Kiara Ramos, a teacher and executive secretary of the Synapse Network, celebrates the results achieved in the municipality. "We arrived here this year through entities and a company that believed in our cause. Education is an urgent issue in Acará, and here we were very well received, with a high level of teacher participation and excellent receptivity in schools. In 2024, we will go to neighboring municipalities to continue this work," she says.

Synapse's work in Pará is possible through a partnership between Hydro and the Lorinvest group and the Bem Maior Movement. The project was selected in a matching fund call from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in 2021 and is executed by the Institute of Technology and Innovation Research (IPTI).

"Hydro has the challenge of training over 500,000 people in the territories where it operates, and this partnership is strategic in this regard. We hope to expand the project to two other municipalities in 2024. It is a great opportunity for partnership and joint territorial development in the region," comments Higia Brandão, senior manager of Sustainability and Social Impact at Hydro. The company's investment in this initiative is about R$ 1.5 million in three municipalities, and the expectation is to reach around 12,000 students and 600 teachers in the three years of project execution.

Currently, Pará has low learning rates in the early years of elementary education and a high dropout rate. Additionally, the pandemic has brought challenges to the sector. Between 2019 and 2021, there was a 66.3% increase in the number of 6 and 7-year-old children who could not read and write. Through the project, teachers teaching in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years of elementary school received training. Moreover, a new freely accessible school management system, validated by the Ministry of Education (MEC), is being implemented.

Transforming Lives

For Professor Antônio Belo, the training was very constructive: "The methodology is innovative; through it, you can bring an entire context of a child's reality into the classroom, in their daily life experience. That is something they know, and it makes learning much easier."

According to Carla Portal, the Municipal Secretary of Education of Acará, the municipality currently has two thousand students in the network across just over 150 schools. "Any help is welcome, especially if it contributes to education, which is the future. Synapse leaves a legacy of knowledge, experience, experiences, and new methodological practices for the network and the trained and qualified teachers to develop and continue this project. May there be even more investments in education in Acará," she concludes.