The USP Aproxima-Ação Program develops actions especially focused on issues related to the relationship between the University of São Paulo and the surrounding communities. Taking Popular Education, Human Rights, and Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights as its guiding principles, the USP Aproxima-Ação Program is a space for dialogue between the actions and projects of the University of São Paulo (USP) and the social demands of the community, focusing on children and adolescents in vulnerable situations. The Program, through interventions and articulations, both at the University and in the community, promotes university extension activities within the several areas of knowledge, with the participation of students, professors and employees from the University.
In the academic scope, the Program has recognized actions for the formation and qualification of the university community, as well as contributing to the formation of educators and other professionals.
Until 2020, Aproxima-Ação Program developed its activities under two fronts: the first around the Approximation Network, which brings together several institutions, either USP Teaching Units and/or external institutions, active or interested in acting with the communities. The second is centered around the Campus Children and Adolescents Project, which focuses on the issue of unaccompanied, vulnerable children and adolescents living in the streets of the University. It is divided into several actions, with the aim of bringing them closer to their social protection network – family, school, and community.
Currently, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the suspension of face-to-face and hands-on care, both of the Program and of schools and after-school institutions, has harmed the activities developed by Aproxima-Ação in the scope of the open environment education methodology, due to the impossibility of the educators’ performance in the territory. In this scenario, the Approximation-Action Program, aiming to continue with its actions, articulated itself in the construction of remote activities, betting on virtual training of its scholarship holders and continuous articulation with the Approximation Network in an online way. The Program was also contemplated by the Edict 01/2020 “Fomento às iniciativas de cultura e extensão ligadas aos ODS-ONU” of the Pró-Reitoria de Cultura e Extensão Universitária, which enabled the construction of the diffusion course “Popular Education in Pandemic Times”, aimed at educators and consisting of video classes of guest lecturers on themes that instigate the debate on education, health, environment, human rights, and the rights of children and adolescents.
Program History – The University of São Paulo and Jardim São Remo: from the Avizinhar Program to Aproxima-Ação
The Apróxima-Ação Program was created in 1998 as an institutional initiative of the University of São Paulo with a view to social cohesion. Its goal was to establish a mutually respectful coexistence between USP and the low-income population living in the vicinity of the university campus by assisting children and young people, children of families in these communities.
“Avizinhar” (Houaiss Dictionary of the Portuguese Language): to stay or be close to, to draw near, to approach, to come close to; to be close to; to confine to, to be neighbors with; to have similarities; to resemble.
The Avizinhar Program favored the methodology of open environment education, which occurs through action/intervention in spaces other than formal ones, by being present in the places where the child lives and/or stays. The establishment of a bond with the children made it possible to extend the educators’ work to the families and the community. Through home visits, surveys were carried out on the school situation, the socioeconomic situation, family structures, and the diagnosis of social demands.
Avizinhar work made it possible to constitute a multidisciplinary team composed of students, employees and professors of the University who brought their experiences and academic training to the practice of the Program and were able to learn, experience and analyze a practice of working with people, communities and institutions. Constituting a Protection Network: Avizinhar Escola (approach with public schools), Rede Butantã (approach with NGOs and local public services), Fórum da Criança e do Adolescente do Butantã (thematic network) and Micro-network São Remo.
The Avizinhar developed training courses for teenagers and young people from the neighboring communities, due to the demand for extracurricular activities. These activities strengthened the bonds between the young people, who then founded the Grêmio Treinamicro. This experience was reported in the documentary “Grêmio Treinamicro: Uma Experiência Sociocultural Revisitada na USP”.
In 2007, the Avizinhar Program ended its activities when the Executive Coordination of University Cooperation of Special Activities of the USP (CECAE-USP) was extinguished, leading the Program to be embraced by the Pro-Rectorate of Culture and University Extension of the USP (PRCEU-USP). Only in 2013, inspired by Avizinhar, the Aproxima-Ação Program is out of idealization and is established, constituted, along with other programs, the Núcleo dos Direitos da USP, inside PRCEU. Currently, the Núcleo dos Direitos is called “USP Communities”.
