What we do
Pró-Saber SP Institute is a non-profit civil society organization located in the Paraisópolis community in São Paulo, Brazil, since 2003.
Our mission is to strengthen Brazilian children’s integral education through experiences in reading and playing, transforming families and their communities.
Over the course of almost 20 years, Pró developed a methodology which is anchored on three axes: reading, playing and the protagonism of children and youths.
Reading and playing helps form our character and transforms our actions into an ecosystem where programs and projects coexist, while bringing people together around a consistent and fun practice. Everything and everybody revolves around forming readers, starting with the commitment and the pleasure of reading a book every day, and with daily spontaneous playing, as manifested by the child and as mediated by their culture.
With our youth, playing and reading comes up as tools of self-knowledge and valuation of their history. Thus, Pró community, which is comprised of children, youths, families and collaborators, has created its own culture, where everyone takes care of each other, everyone teaches and everyone learns, all at once. We call this “methodology”. Through our methodology, we empower our ecosystem, while empowering each person who is part of it with practices mediated by reading, by playing and by the affection that transforms Pró in a constantly developing place.
With our team, learning and teaching takes place while guided by those same axes and by what we call education in service. Everyone is a subject in their practices; as they teach, they are also being educated and so they learn, in a constant exchange of knowledge and experiences.
As they engage in situations where the practice is constantly studied, they have the opportunity to develop their authorship and protagonism as individuals who are always producing knowledge.
Within this huge ecosystem built with reading and playing practices, we have developed some programs that are interrelated.
Our Reading Ecosystem
At Pró, we work as in an ecosystem where each program adds on and collaborates with another. Therefore, our organization works as a great living organism, and remains powerful.
The focal point – and what feeds into every program of this ecosystem – is Reading and Playing, since we understand both tools are the key for strengthening a quality integral education.
Therefore, we have Pró Read & Play, which was our first program and shares tools and methodologies with the other programs, Pró-Saber SP Library, which welcomes not only children enrolled in R&P, but those from the entire community, as part of the process of fostering the habit of reading and playing.
Then we have Pró Youth, which makes use of Reading and Playing to work on the protagonism of the community and on human development, while offering the tools for those youths who wish to multiply our methodology with Pró Read & Play in Schools, which takes place in other spaces in our community.
The family is a key axle in each of those programs. This is where we create bonds and where we can provide learning experiences for the family members of enrolled children and youths.
Lastly, we felt the urge to surpass our community boundaries, so we created Pró Education, an online education platform where we share our methodology, free of cost, with educators who may wish to implement our program in other spaces.
Our programs
We work on different fronts within the Paraisópolis community in São Paulo and beyond, because we believe #eachreadermatters.
Stories that are Pró
Since 2003, different people have passed through Pró and left their marks on our history.