What do you think teenagers have been doing during the pandemic? Do you think they are lying around playing video games? While that might be true for some people, it is not the case for Valentina. Valentina Liberman is an 11th-grader at Avenues The World School, São Paulo. Due to the pandemic, Avenues changed its school method for online learning at the beginning of March. When that happened, the students got together to help the community in Jardim Panorama. Jardim Panorama is an impoverished community, also known as favela in Portuguese, that lies in the middle of the upper class neighborhood of Morumbi and is located right in front of Avenues. 

As mentioned by Valentina in the interview, they all got worried about the social situation of the people in the community since many of them were autonomous workers. Therefore, to help their neighbors, they decided to work on different projects. The group prepared kits, including food, hygiene products and educational kits. Furthermore, they worked with “ideias feitas à mão” (handmade ideas) that would help entertain kids during quarantine, and maybe generate income for the families in the future. 

Valentina was most involved in preparing the baby kits, where she helped the distribution and used social media to raise money and share the projects. The short-term objectives are to continue obtaining donations and distributing them to both Jardim Panorama and other communities. They receive donations from large companies and people in general. In the future, they want to continue the donations and the Handmade Ideas projects, by creating reusable menstrual pads to generate income and keep distributing masks to Brazil.

Something they all managed to embrace during these projects, was to get to know more people in the impoverished communities. Moreover, they were also working very close to a group of women and mothers who are representatives from Jardim Panorama and “it is amazing how the collaboration in these projects brought strength to the group of women” as stated by Valentina.  

The most remarkable thing Valentina told me was that her most important lesson throughout this experience was to learn more about her city, neighbors, and mainly how to embrace the community. The student also said that her role models are young women that can make an impactful difference. She supports Malala Yousafzai because of how she made a significant change in various lives, and at the same time, helping these people with their education. One of Valentina’s passions is education and, in the future, she would like to support that area and create initiatives to generate income. Valentina said that something she would adore bringing awareness to is embracing our neighbors and that she is now thinking more about the community, helping who is next door. Students at Avenues created multiple projects to help Jardim Panorama, and she believes that these small projects still have a long path to follow.

What I could learn about Valentina and the group she is participating in is that there are many ways to help people during this pandemic and that even by staying at home, there are various ways to make a difference in people’s lives and our own. To get to know more details about these initiatives, watch the video interview.

Catarina Fabiani, 11 years old, 5th-grader at Avenues São Paulo
Valentina Liberman, 16 years old, 11th-grader at Avenues São Paulo

For more information regarding the projects access:

• Homemade Ideas | Ideias Feitas à Mão
  Ideias Feitas à Mão do Jd. Panorama 
• feitasamaoideias
• Apoio ao Jardim Panorama apoio.jdpanorama

Video interview:

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