Escola Comunitária Jardim do Cajueiro (Jardim do Cajueiro Community School)

The Jardim do Cajueiro Community School is a non-profit social and educational project, without owners, that is funded by contributions from families of students, sponsorship of children/recurring donors (individuals or organizations that voluntarily pay the educational costs of a student), contributions from individuals and organizations for specific projects, and one-off donations.

Jardim do Cajueiro first opened in 2006 in a borrowed house with just 24 children, most of whom from families in a situation of economic and social vulnerability. Today the school has grown considerably and covers everything from Kindergarten to Middle School, with more than 170 students in 2024.

Currently, around 35% of students have Guaranteed Places, i.e. they are socially vulnerable children who are looking for sponsors to pay for their tuition fees. However, only half of these children are sponsored.

Jardim do Cajueiro has grown and established itself as a reference in education and social assistance. However, for some years now the physical space has been too small to meet the demand in the community. Therefore, through donations from partners and support from local companies, we have been able to build three new classrooms. After the completion of the construction work, it has been possible to cater to the young children in a suitable site exclusively for them and we have also freed up space in our current school building to cater to students in Elementary and Middle School without improvisation. The direct impact of this is healthy conditions for our teaching.

With the structure we have today, we can cater to children and teenagers from Kindergarten to Middle School, but we want to go further. Our community has only one public school that serves as a High School. Besides this school being unable to accommodate all the students in the region, it has several problems with its physical and educational structure. It is common for residents to move to other towns when their children finish Middle School in order to find a better High School.

Given this context, the Jardim do Cajueiro Community School intends to acquire (through donations) a new plot of land for the construction of classrooms for High School. Since these are students who will soon be entering adulthood, it is not possible to have the classes in the same location as the young children. The children are still in the phase of singing and playing, making lots of noise, while High School students need more silence and concentration for a much more demanding content and workload.

In addition to setting up High School classes, the main goal of the school is to reach the target of 50% of students enrolled in Guaranteed Places (socially vulnerable children). Last year, we managed to add another 5%, increasing the figure from 30% to 35% of students in this profile, meaning about 60 students in economic and social vulnerability.