Cidadão Pró-Mundo English Course

English is a highly valuable, if not completely necessary asset for learning, business, and technology in an increasingly globalized world, and yet studies indicate that no more than 10% of Brazil's population can speak it. And for many underprivileged communities, access to a quality English education is largely closed due to deep social inequities.

Through an innovative volunteering model, Cidadão Pró-Mundo offers a 5-year English language course to 2,400 underprivileged students in 13 communities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We engage 1,250 volunteers who donate their time and energy to share their command of English. The course is entirely free to students, who receive academic materials through partnerships with pedagogical organizations. We not only empower our students to a myriad of opportunities, but also allow volunteers to learn from our students about the social challenges and realities that make our society so unequal.

English is still an asset for the privileged in developing countries. In Brazil, studies indicate that no more than 10% of the population can communicate in English. The 2018 EF English Proficiency Index places Brazil only at the 53rd position among 88 countries assessed, being the 6th in Latin America despite its predominantly larger economy in the region. Furthermore, more than 50% of Brazilian public school English teachers are below the intermediate level in the Common European Framework (CEFR), as indicated by the Inter-American Dialogue report on English Language Learning in Latin America.

Moreover, surveys show that those who can speak English have significant advantages in an increasingly globalized world. Wages can be up to 35% higher and professionals looking for re-employment have a 50% higher chance of being hired if they have advanced English skills. For young people from low-income communities in Brazil, the possibilities for upward social mobility remain largely closed without proficiency of this valuable language. Within this context, Cidadão Pró-Mundo believes that English is a core social development skill that allows our students to explore several other opportunities that otherwise they would never be able to.

Our students represent a diversity of ages and occupations, but all come from disadvantaged and historically-marginalized communities. 96% of students have a B2- or lower-level socioeconomic level as defined by the Associação Brasileira de Empresas de Pesquisas (ABEP) framework. 62% of our students are between the ages of 11 and 25 and 38% are above 25. We are working to consolidate the age demographic to younger students in the coming semesters.

Each CPM unit is based in its respective community, and classes are held on weekends in community spaces—usually public schools. The location of the classes is highly accommodating for our students, as most units are within a short commute from their homes.

Students with an internationally-recognized English certificate are offered many more opportunities for employment and further study than they would with no certificate. In addition to needing English skills for the modern workplace, there is still a large stigma attached to individuals from low-income communities in Brazil such that even if an individual speaks English proficiently, without a certificate, they are written off as unqualified. CPM aims to tackle this systemic problem by providing a first-rate English education, free of charge, to students who need it the most.

We currently offer free a 5-year English course to about 2,400 students. CPM classes are held on weekends and are all taught by local volunteers. We engage about 1,250 volunteers, known as “volunteachers,” who donate their time to teach the CPM English course. The course is entirely free to all of our students, who receive course materials from our pedagogical partners.

In our units in twelve communities in the state of São Paulo and one in the state of Rio de Janeiro, each community receives the opportunity to enroll students in free weekend English classes. All the teaching material used by teachers and students throughout the CPM course is developed and provided by Cambridge University Press, a partner that helps us to guarantee the high level of quality of the course without any cost to our students or volunteers. Beginner students start at level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) and finish the course at the B1 level. After the 5-year general CPM course, we offer another course, CPM Qualify, which prepares students for the level B2 First Certificate in English (FCE) exam, the most internationally-recognized certificate for English proficiency. With an FCE certificate, our students are able to enter the globalized workplace and institutions for higher study with these valuable credentials.

In addition to English pedagogy, we also organize mock interviews and workshops in order to prepare students to enter the workplace. Through partnerships with local and international companies, students attend mock job interviews to practice using their English skills for employment opportunities. Another active project is CPM Talents, in which a detailed database of students is created in order to identify job opportunities for students amongst the companies that support the NGO.

CPM has only 3 full-time staff, and the rest of our team are volunteers. We use an innovative rotational volunteering model, in which each of our ‘volunteachers’ is asked to teach only 1 class per month, which makes it much easier for them to fit it in their busy schedules over time. Moreover, classes are always taught in couples, so that students have as much personalized attention as possible, and so that newer teachers feel more comfortable and gain experience by being allocated initially with older volunteers. We currently have a 70% retention rate of volunteers from semester to semester.

Much beyond teaching English and transforming the realities of low-income students at their own communities, CPM also promotes significant volunteering opportunities to and engage those who are willing to share their knowledge and broaden their own perspectives about Brazil’s numerous social challenges. 

We use an innovative rotational volunteering model in which each of our ‘volunteachers’ is asked to teach only 1 class per month, which makes it much easier for them to fit their commitment to CPM in their busy schedules. Moreover, classes are always taught in couples, so that students have as much personalized attention as possible and newer teachers feel more comfortable and gain experience by being allocated initially with older volunteers. We currently have a 70% retention rate of volunteers from semester to semester!

At CPM, we also believe that pedagogy is not one-sided. In most teaching settings in schools and in many existing NGOs, it is believed that the learning is done solely by the student. However, at CPM, by recruiting volunteers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds to teach students from lower ones, the learning goes two ways: while our students are learning English, our ‘volunteachers’ are also learning about the lives of their students. While teaching in lower-income communities, volunteers can learn enormously from our students about the social challenges and realities that make our society so unequal. In promoting this cross-class exchange, we work to tackle the roots of the pervasive inequality in Brazilian society.

We believe in a unique form of ‘social technology’ that allows social equality to progress while English is being taught. We believe that English is not only a language, but a tool for social transformation, which becomes especially true in the Brazilian context. Brazilian society is plagued not only by economic inequality, but vast social inequality, by which underprivileged groups face a pervasive social stigma and many barriers to success due to their marginalized status. Much of this social inequality is also geographical; in cities like São Paulo, underprivileged communities inhabit the outskirts and periphery of the metropolis, while wealthier communities lay claim to the more central areas of the city.

Within this context, we believe that by employing a model of volunteering in which higher-income individuals go to the peripheral communities to teach, a social-leveling process takes place. As mentioned before, the learning is two-sided at CPM, as volunteers are able to acquaint themselves with students and learn about the reality of life in the periphery. Volunteers are able to humble their perspectives while students are able to broaden their horizons, and this all comes together through English teaching. Therefore, we view our teaching model as a social technology in which society is made more equal through cross-class engagement.

STUDENTS

Activities

Young people take free English classes

Outputs

Students gain a command of English and become more and more proficient

Short-Term Outcomes

Students become more motivated to continue taking CPM classes

Students become more enthusiastic about learning

Students gain confidence in realizing that they now have skills that are competitive in a modern workplace

Long-Term Outcomes

Students gain long-term employment opportunities

Students further their studies in higher institutions

Former students come back to CPM and volunteer as teachers

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TEACHERS

Activities

Teachers volunteer on weekends to teach English classes

Outputs

Teachers feel positively about making an impact in society

Short-Term Impact

Teachers gain pedagogical skills, the ability to engage with students and people from other backgrounds

Teachers encourage their friends and colleagues to volunteer with CPM or get involved

Long-Term Impact

Teachers become more aware of the social circumstances of their society; their perspectives change when they form relationships with their students. No longer are these groups of people stigmatized or viewed negatively, but rather their potential and value are recognized.

CPM gains lasting partnerships with organizations that volunteers work at; word-of-mouth spreads to get the public involved with CPM.

currently: 2,400 students; over 15,000 graduates from the CPM course

one year: 2,500 students

five years: 3,000 students

CPM has grown significantly within the last 5 years in terms of the number of students we impact thanks to the structuring of a small team of (3) full time employees that has supported the opening of 6 new units since 2014. We have been positively surprised with the speed of our growth and are proud of it, but we now must focus much more strongly on enhancing the quality of our program considering that it gained a much bigger scale than we planned for. In 2012, our strategic plan aimed to reach 1,500 students by the end of 2017 at our best case scenario. We ended up reaching that goal one year in advance and, by the end of 2017, we were already at more than 2,000 students and 1,000 volunteers.

CPM faces risks not only within the model but also due to changing social factors in Brazil. Firstly, we rely heavily on our existing business partnerships to keep our operations running. Support from our most important partners, such as Cambridge University Press, which provides all pedagogical materials, and the São Paulo Open Center, which provides classroom space for exams, is crucial to continue offering our classes for free and with efficiency. Therefore, the termination of these partnerships would be a large challenge to our NGO. However, we view this as a small risk. 

Secondly, there is the risk of a lack of volunteers who are willing to offer their time to teach CPM classes, or a lack of engagement from existing volunteers. However, this is also a very minor risk, because we have consistently had an over-subscribed database of volunteers; i.e. more people want to volunteer than we have spots available.

Thirdly, and perhaps more pressingly, Brazil’s social fabric is changing. Under the current government administration, social equity programs face budget cuts, and reform of the education system is increasingly under-prioritized. The Brazilian government has made moves to enact sweeping cuts to funding of public universities, in addition to plans to eliminate the humanities and social sciences from these universities. Amid these alarming developments for the future of public education, the success of CPM’s students may be placed in jeopardy by the prevailing government policies.

Firstly, in order to maintain our partnerships with our most important organizations, we hold regular meetings with their representatives and provide large amounts of feedback to them about how CPM courses are going. By providing this feedback, these organizations are able to clearly see how their support is effecting change in the lives of Brazilian students. In the unfortunate event of the termination of one of these partnerships, we would seek out financial partnerships with willing organizations to cover the costs of teaching material and exams.

Secondly, in order to maintain a reliable and engaged volunteer cohort, our rotational model of volunteering ensures that volunteers only have to commit to teaching a single class per month. This built-in aspect of low commitment guarantees that most volunteers can fit their commitment to CPM in their schedule. However, in the event that ‘volunteachers’ are absent from their classes, we keep at least five backup ‘volunteachers’ on call every weekend, thanks to the oversubscribed interest in volunteering.

And lastly, while CPM’s students may face challenges entering institutions of further study or employment in the face of unfavorable education policies, we hope that the alarming state of Brazilian politics may work to bolster public engagement with CPM, by mobilizing more and more people who want to invest in our social transformational model. Amidst unfavorable public opinion of these policies, we hope that more people will be motivated to get involved with CPM in various ways in order to make a change in society.

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Full-time staff: 3

Part-time volunteer staff: 6

Volunteers: 1,250 per semester

The key personnel involved in Cidadão Pró-Mundo are: 

• The Executive Directors: Duval Guimarães, President; Arthur Dassan, Finance Director; and Karine Ribeiro, Legal Director. All of these are volunteer positions.

• CPM’s full-time team support: Samuel Gama, Pedagogical Manager; Thais Sicchieri, Operational Manager, and Ticiane Shiki, Strategic and Financial Manager. All of these are paid positions.

• Several volunteer local coordination groups.

• Volunteer teachers.

For Duval Guimarães, who serves voluntarily as President of Cidadão Pró-Mundo, his dedication to and vision for CPM is personal. Growing up from an underprivileged background, he was lucky enough to move to the United States at age 17, where he worked his way up the social ladder until he received a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from American University. He also received a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2013. Duval credits his English education as the most valuable life skill that he was offered, and realized how necessary it is for Brazilians to move abroad and pursue opportunities for education and employment. With that gratitude in mind, Duval came to CPM with the vision of spreading this valuable asset to the members of the population who need it most.

Our staff have also worked in several nonprofit organizations, managing their institutional relations, and working to build bridges between the nonprofit and business sectors. Our team is graced with advanced communication skills, analytical and interpersonal capabilities, and experience in teaching English classes, uniquely qualifying them to lead CPM.

Cambridge University Press provides us with all of our English pedagogical materials and exam certificates. Through a lasting partnership, Cambridge has committed to providing The São Paulo Open Centre provides us with free classroom space for our CPM Qualify courses. 

CPM also partners with Bloomberg and Google, who both provide mock job interviews in English for our students, to better prepare them to enter the workplace using their English skills. They also promote several workshops and parallel skill courses focused on career and personal development.

Other partners include:

Associação Citi Esperanza

Charities Aid Foundation America

Sage Foundation

IBM

WeWork

3Gen Gestão Estrategica

Mackenzie

GoodStorage

Ampere

Plug

Bonita Produções

Pulpo

Programa Escola da Família

Zonaro Consultores

Phomenta

Colégio pH

We follow the cooperative model of social enterprise. If we think in terms of ‘target population’ and ‘market,’ our students represent the target population while our volunteers, for the most part, come from the market. We gather middle-to-upper-class volunteers, mostly who work in commerce, to teach students English from underprivileged communities. Along with their English skills, our volunteers bring social capital and knowledge of the modern workplace to their relationships with students. Therefore, our students benefit from the resources present in the market. On the other hand, our volunteers learn, too. They benefit by gaining teaching skills and by building valuable relationships with our students. This causes their social circles to be impacted by a knowledge of and esteem for people from underprivileged communities. As a result, the market sector becomes more interested in accommodating members of the target population.

CPM is mainly financially sustained by donations from individuals, companies, and investments. We partner with over twenty organizations which provide us with donations of operational or financial resources.

We are also on a path to diversify our sources of funding, which is a way of minimizing the impact of a financial partner loss. We've increased the individual donations from 10% to 20% in one year, and are seeking big donors through contacts and media influencers. The new recently restructured governance, that has very experienced members on the Managing Board and Financial Board, are the first indicatives of this path.

We've also initiated the obtaining of Brazilian Government certificates, that will allow the fundraising from governmental sources, including tax exemption programs. Individuals are much more likely to donate when their donation has tax exempt status. We have also sought out tax-exempt status in the US to attract US-based donors, but this would require establishing an auxiliary NGO in the US. As an effective alternative to this, we have partnered with the Charities Aid Foundation of America (CAF), and are working on an application to GlobalGiving, both of which provide an easy way for US-based donors to get tax-exempt status. GlobalGiving and CAF are also useful sources for crowdfunding.

One barrier that has become clear is that we must invest in the revision of our pedagogical model by implementing a standard and gradual English Certification Program across the 5 year-course that allows us to deeply diagnose the main proficiency gaps of all of our students half-way through the course, review our class plans and arrangements based on their test results and, consequently, better prepare them for international certifications such as the Cambridge Exam’s Key English Test (KET), Preliminary English Test (PET) and First Certificate in English (FCE). 

This program will require the recruitment of at least 1 pedagogic specialist that can be dedicated full time to the NGO in training our volunteers, coordinating the application of the tests to hundreds of students at several units, assessing student results and reviewing our teaching methodology as necessary to enhance our course. Moreover, in order to guarantee that all of our students can afford the tests, we will also need to cover their costs. 

Aside from the financial support, the MIT Solve Award will also provide us with outstanding recognition that will certainly help us attract other strong and long-term partnerships that will, in result, be crucial to support future expansions once our pedagogical model has been revised and replanned for a much bigger scale. As such, we will be able to break up technological barriers as basic as having access to high-speed internet and technology devices that are so evident in the communities in which we operate.

We are constantly looking for donors to fund CPM’s operations. We mainly target financial institutions and banks based in Brazil, but have recently expanded to search for donors abroad. We also are interested in partnering with other NGOs that focus on education and/or children who can accelerate our efficiency and scale of impact.

We are also interested in partnering with more academic institutions, particularly abroad, that are pioneering language teaching models that could be of use to us. For example, if a university develops new insights into methods for English teaching, we could partner with them to have their methods prototyped at CPM.

We believe that CPM would be an ideal candidate for the Morgridge Family Foundation Prize due to our innovative social-transformation model. We believe that English teaching is a tool for social transformation that can unite both the privileged and underprivileged of Brazilian society with the goal of full economic and social inclusion.

By bringing volunteers from privileged backgrounds into underprivileged communities, not only do our students feel more comfortable learning English in their home setting, but we are able to disrupt the social structures that have for decades segregated the privileged and underprivileged in Brazil. Many middle- and upper-class individuals are completely unaware of the realities faced by their fellow citizens in the peripheries of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and thus are able to broaden their outlook of the inequality of Brazilian society by deeply engaging with students from these areas. We view that with our teaching model, we are able to bridge the deep divides of our society while working towards meaningful solutions.

We would use this prize to strengthen and expand our programs, which could include the opening of new units across Brazil. With more units, we not only reach more students and volunteers, but set an example for other similar NGOs in the area to adopt our 'volunteaching' model. We would also use this prize to expand our pedagogical programs, hiring more specialists to precisely identify the needs of our students in order to make our courses as effective as possible.