ABOUT PIRAMBU PEACE PROJECT

The Pirambu Peace Project is an eight-week program aimed to empower a group of adolescents from the neighborhood of Pirambu in Fortaleza through photography and English language skills. The goal is to give these students the opportunity for self-advancement through acquiring new skills, as well as to empower the children to use the camera lens as a tool for self-exploration. Photography will give the students a chance to expose their realities with the city of Fortaleza as well as the rest of the world. Images will reveal the rich culture and the hearts of the people of Pirambu.
For the English language portion of the project, our goal is to grow the student’s conversational skills. We will use the community language learning approach in the classroom. This method allows student input in terms of content, while making our role more one of a facilitator. While focusing on conversation, we will incorporate photographs to learn new vocabulary. By the end of the eight weeks, each student will be asked to write a bilingual essay about themselves and their photographs for the final exhibition.

We are targeting students who are entering a stage of transition: their final year of the local public high school. We have recruited a group of 20 students from two local high schools: Lions Jangada and Flavio Marcilio. We contacted administrators at the two schools who connected us with students they felt would benefit most from the program. Each student was asked to write a brief explanation of why they want to learn photography and expand their English language skills.

The courses will start on Monday, June 14th. Students will meet in the afternoons for two hours at ACARTES, Monday through Thursday. The classes will run until the 29th of July. Throughout the eight weeks, students will learn how to use the camera as an artistic tool, how to express themselves through the camera lens, and how to converse in English. We will begin the eight-week course with an introduction to photography as well as an evaluation of their English language skills. We have created a detailed weekly schedule that will include the following activities:
• Analyzing examples of the elements of photography
• Traveling to Barraca da Amizade, an NGO in another part of the city, to learn with other photography students.
• Editing digital photographs on the computer.
• Traveling to Ze Albano’s house and studio for a lesson from a professional Brazilian photographer.
• Joining students at the University of Fortaleza’s photography lab to observe a college level program.
• Learning about employment opportunities related to the coursework.
• Preparing a bilingual exhibition for the public of Fortaleza.

By the end of the eight-week course we expect the group to know the features of the camera, understand the power of photography as a social tool, and gain the confidence to converse in English. The course will conclude with an exhibition in Pirambu, to share the student’s work with their families and friends. This will give the students the chance to share their images and stories with a group less familiar with their lives. As Albert Einstein said, “peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding.”

Anna Valiante and Waleska Santiago
Co-Coordinators of the Project Pirambu Peace Project