About Projeto LER

“We are all migrants. Some of us cross borders”

We are a transdisciplinary university extension project, developed by the Postgraduate Program in Letters at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), which aims at promoting the interaction and social emancipation of children, youngsters and adults, in situations of refuge and migration, in Brazilian society, through educational, artistic and cultural actions. Since its inception in 2018, the project has assumed the values and the dynamics of an intercultural learning community, and strives to add academic-scientific efforts to meet the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs), proposed by the United Nations for 2030.

About us

“[...] Reading the word is not only preceded by reading the world, but also by a certain form of writing it or rewriting it.”

Paulo Freire (1989)

We are an intercultural learning community, in which Portuguese Language and Brazilian culture are taught in an affective coexistence relationship, through the cultivation of friendship and mutual interest in each other's well-being. Moreover, we value the commitment to the cultural integration and the social emancipation of each of the project’s participants. We are here to share our difficulties, but also our dreams, our desires, and our personal achievements.

Our work — teaching Portuguese as an Additional Language to immigrants and refugees — is based on the principles of HUMANISTIC EDUCATION. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy, we believe that education must be a humane experience, oriented by affection, towards the PRACTICE OF LIBERTY.

In methodological terms, our activities are strongly inspired by the French educator Célestin Freinet and his Pedagogy of Common Sense. Among these activities are those that take on public space as a learning space, and the use of communication and information technology as an important strategy for social interaction.

All our pedagogical actions are based on the defense of the exercise of personal autonomy, on the recognition of talents and skills, on the inclusion and emancipation of refugees and immigrants who wish or need to learn Portuguese as a means to their social and cultural integration in Brazil.

Therefore, we’re committed to the international agenda of the Defense of the Human Rights and the Culture of Peace.

Quem somos

What we do

Together, we routinely live the dynamics of an intercultural learning community that shares the desire to learn Portuguese language and Brazilian culture. Therefore, we share the knowledge and the different linguistic and cultural experiences that we bring with us. In this community, we perform actions that cooperate to the development of reading and writing skills, based on texts from different genres, contexts, supports and media. In all our activities, we cultivate the dynamics of reading and writing circles.

Our pedagogical actions are defined by the contextualized practices of writing and reading different texts, fulfilling the participants’ concrete communicative goals, and aiming at their social and cultural integration in the host city.

Our meetings, whether remote or in person, are a space for collective, collaborative and active learning. In it, we all learn — participants, teachers and students who work in the project.

Our reading, writing, listening and speaking practices — in Portuguese — are planned and performed based on the cultural experiences, the personal skills and the social, cultural and linguistic demands of the project’s participants.

Among the pedagogical and cultural activities developed by the LER Project, there are:

reading and writing workshops;
elaboration of unprecedented study material;
games and dynamics for grammar learning;
systematic thinking about citizenship rights;
excursions and classes in public spaces;
short courses;
film club;
sharing circles;
reading club;
poetry reading;

O que fazemos

Como fazemos

The pedagogical actions we perform are grounded in the Four Pillars of Education for the 21st Century proposed by UNESCO: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and, therefore, learning to be.

The learning experiences we have are developed in the dynamics of a “circle”, in a space and time dedicated to “learning-by-doing” together, in our workshops.

In this circle, we collaboratively develop reading and writing practices that allow us to share and amplify our understanding of our reality (on a social, cultural or emotional level); to act creatively — becoming protagonists — in the world we live in; to live collaboratively together, in the most diverse social activities.

The experiences lived in this context establish a close relationship with the interests and needs of immigrants and refugees, from different countries, who are part of this intercultural learning community.

To reach our goals, all the pedagogical actions we develop presume the execution of reading and writing activities, individually or collectively, based on different texts, in different media. Therefore, we promote activities of critical and reflexive reading of journalistic, instructional, informational and literary texts, among others. Besides, the production of different oral and written texts — such as interviews, personal presentations, letters, emails, short stories, among other possible, necessary and desired genres.

The LER Project also provides for the inclusion of participants in pedagogical actions that privilege the audiovisual language, with the objective of deepening the aesthetic sensibility and expanding the participants’ cultural capital. In this regard, the project makes use of exercises, workshops and mini-courses in the production and editing of photography, video-mobile and podcast.