Maple Bear supports vulnerable Brazilian children through UNICEF Brazil’s Active Search Program

Maple Bear is committed to our students becoming good local and global citizens. We incorporate these important values into our methodology, curriculum and community investment initiatives.

We are also motivated when, as an organization, we can support projects which promote active citizenship in the countries in which we operate. In March 2018, we announced our commitment of $100K USD to support a UNICEF Brazil initiative that targets children who are out-of-school yet have the right to access quality education as citizens of Brazil.

2.8 million Brazilian kids are not in school

In Brazil, more than 2.8 million school-aged children are out-of-school. UNICEF Brazil is determined to help solve this problem through various programs and Active Search is one of them. It is an online tool used by municipalities to locate children who are not registered in school, to capture the reasons why they aren’t, and to follow them through school once they are enrolled.

Maple Bear Global Schools President visits adolescents working on Active Search

In June 2018, Rodney Briggs, President of Maple Bear Global Schools had the opportunity to meet the adolescents who are working with UNICEF Brazil on Active Search when he travelled to São Luís, Brazil to visit the Maple Bear school there.

There, he met the students involved in the program as they attended a workshop designed to get input and ideas from these young people on ways to further increase the impact of the Active Search program, based on their perceptions and experiences of education in their municipalities.

Maple Bear’s donation will support UNICEF Brazil to develop training materials for the adolescents’ engagement in vulnerable areas such as the Amazon and the semi-arid regions, covering more than 1,800 municipalities in Brazil.

This video is being used to promote Active Search and solicit engagement from the public and students to come up with reasons to go to school and how to bring in more excluded kids.

Active Search Program fights exclusion of youth from school

“The participation from society, and especially from the adolescents themselves, in creating solutions to fight school exclusion is fundamental. In this sense, the activities UNICEF Brazil is working on with Maple Bear’s support strengthen the citizenship participation of adolescents through their involvement in mobilizing the government and civil society, so every child and adolescent without exception, is in school.” – Ítalo Dutra, Head of Education UNICEF Brazil.

From left: Rodney Briggs, Maple Bear Global Schools President; Chiedza Kurangwa, Corporate Sponsorship UNICEF Brazil; Italo Dutra, Director of Education UNICEF Brazil; Gabriela Mora, Program Officer, UNICEF Brazil; and Ida Pietricovsky Oliveira, Communications Specialist UNICEF Brazil.

Active Search is helping the most vulnerable children in Brazil to have a second chance at an education. Maple Bear Global Schools congratulates everyone for all the hard work being done by the UNICEF Brazil team.

If you want to learn more about Active Search, click here: https://buscaativaescolar.org.br