Continuing its partnership with the Ame Sua Mente Institute, which began in 2018 with seed investment, the ABCD Charitable Trust co-financed, together with the Umane Foundation, the Ame Sua Mente na Escola project, which promotes the training of educators from the public education network of the state of São Paulo in mental health, with the following objectives: promoting literacy in mental health; preventing mental disorders in youth; reducing the stigmas of diseases and mental disorders; and resolving mental health problems in the school environment. Between 2020 and 2021, more than 80 schools participated in the mental health training program, through a partnership with the São Paulo State Department of Education. After the course, 84% of the participants reported improvement in their ability to deal with mental health problems presented by students and 85% reported improved ability to refer identified cases.
In addition to financial support, the ABCD Charitable Trust promoted a partnership between the Ame Sua Mente Institute and the ABCD Institute, whose know-how acquired in the Todos Aprendem Continuing Education Project was crucial for Ame Sua Mente na Escola. The resources were also important for the launch of the Ame Sua Mente na Escola, which aims to foster a culture of mental health promotion, prevention and management in the school environment.
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The Ame Your Mind Institute is a non-governmental organization founded in 2018 by specialists and researchers affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry of the School of Medicine of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp). Their objective is to explore how to promote mental health in the school environment while also contributing to the scientific and technical knowledge base in order to educate and raise awareness in Brazilian society. The ABCD Charitable Trust made a seed investment in 2018 to help create the institute.
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Launched in December 2019 by the ABCD Institute, EduEdu is an Android device app available for free to parents, guardians, and teachers of children with reading difficulties. Initially featuring personalized and printable activity sheets on phonological awareness, alphabetic writing system and reading, EduEdu updated its strategy only three months after its launch: with the arrival of Covid-19 and the challenges of online teaching of reading, especially for students with learning difficulties and disorders. In response, it incorporated digital activities and a Socioemotional Space, developed in partnership with the Ame Sua Mente Institute (also supported by the ABCD Charitable Trust). In just two months, more than 900,000 digital lessons were utilized by children from all over Brazil, at the direction of teachers and, mainly, parents and guardians. In 2021, a year marked by hybrid education, EduEdu continued to expand its digital activities and, in partnership with Cisco, launched the Dyslexia Space, which offers a rapid test to identify signs of dyslexia. The project was developed collaboratively with the company and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Since its release, EduEdu has had more than 2 million downloads, and is recommended by nine out of 10 users, and has a 4.7 rating (out of 5) on the Google Play Store.
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Founded in 2009, iABCD is a Brazilian non-profit institution dedicated to the cause of dyslexia. It works in three main areas: advocacy; specialized diagnosis and follow-up; and education.
Advocacy – working for better support from society and public policies. This led to the creation of a guidebook for parents with children with dyslexia, to help them in starting associations and support groups, as well as approval of Law No. 14,254/2021.
Diagnosis and care – through a call for proposals, ABCD selected five projects (four of them linked to public universities) to build into leading centers on specific learning disorders. This allowed already existing projects to undergo a process of professionalization and promotion.
Education (teachers): the Todos Aprendem project, executed in partnership with educational organizations and municipal and state departments of education, promoted continued training to public school teachers in 2014. The following year, the course moved into an online format, expanding its reach. In addition, iABCD created the online course “Understanding Dyslexia”, aimed at persons with dyslexia, family members, and those interested in the topic.
Education (students): given the high rate of functional illiteracy in the country, estimated at 30%, the iABCD expanded the idea of directly supporting the literacy of children with learning disabilities. In 2019, it launched EduEdu, a free app with personalized activities on phonological awareness, alphabetic writing and reading system.
Pandemic: During the Covid-19 pandemic, EduEdu became an important tool during remote teaching. In addition to activities for printing, iABCD invested in digital activities and in the Socioemotional Space (in partnership with the Ame Sua Mente Institute), also in 2020. The following year, EduEdu continued to expand digital activities and created, with funding from Cisco, the Dyslexia Space, which provides a test for signs of dyslexia developed in partnership with the Federal University of Rio Grande Norte (UFRN). Also during the first two years of the pandemic, iABCD launched two books on specific learning disorders aimed at education professionals, held a cycle of online lectures during Dyslexia Week and conducted the study “Profile of Specific Learning Disorder in Brazil: Costs for families and Impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic” with Cisco’s support. Already reaping results of its actions, iABCD now broadens its vision of helping ALL children with literacy difficulties, in the search to reduce the social, economic, and health barriers imposed on learning in Brazil
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