by MARIANA MELLO

It’s been a little more than a year since VGC Language School started the Educate for Change initiative. Through this project, we are able to help people that cannot have proper education due to poverty, social barriers and precarious human development.

What we do is to accumulate $1 a day for each Brazilian student who comes to VGC and donate that money to Casa do Zezinho and Invest, two non-profit organizations based in Brazil.

We launched this project in Brazil last year and we’ve recently made our first donations to both NGOs. In total, VGC donated $10,500 CAD in materials to both NGOs.

Last month, we visited Casa no Zezinho, in São Paulo, as VGC Language School is their main sponsor for a new project in which teenagers teach adults in computer classes, and adults teach teenagers in sewing and craft workshops.

The place is located in a poor area of the city and VGC is proud of having been able to help them by supplying new IT and cable systems. Now they can have computer classes as well as access to monitoring and phone systems in their new space.

This month, we were in Rio de Janeiro. There we visited Invest, an organization that helps students who live below the poverty line to complete high school programs and pre-university exams. We have donated computers, projectors, paper, boards, printers and all technology and material they need to keep moving forward and towards their career dreams.

It was an incredible experience to be able to receive so many sincere smiles back while doing something we believe is the least we could do as an education institution. Happiness, hugs, laughs… Bringing those donations to people in need wasn’t only about transforming money into materials, but also about helping many of them to have a better and decent future.

 

By being socially responsible, VGC is also able to encourage our own students to become more conscious. By being part of this project, they are also glad to know we are all helping their country together. In fact, lots of them keep engaged and continue to help Brazil once they return from Canada.

Therefore, we want to say a big THANK YOU to all Brazilians that are part of the VGC family for being such dedicated students and great partners, and also for being on board with us on this amazing initiative.

We know our students are just as proud as we are with the completion of this succeeded cycle. A new one starts this year and we will keep doing our part to help more people get a better education.

[custom_author=Mariana Mello]