AIDGLOBAL – Acção e Integração para o Desenvolvimento Global (Action and Integration for Global Development) is a non-profit non-governmental development organisation that operates in Portugal and Mozambique, where it is dedicated to promoting access to books, literacy and quality education. Its history began on 4 November 2005, after a volunteering experience by Susana Damasceno, its founder, in Gaza province, in the south of the country. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary it is now celebrating, AIDGLOBAL reinforces its commitment to working in Mozambique, as Susana Damasceno tells us:
“At AIDGLOBAL, we believe that change happens through Education – the only powerful weapon that razes prejudice and paves the way for knowledge, understanding and mutual respect. And it is through Education that, in Mozambique, we have been designing and implementing projects that respond to local needs.
We have equipped 32 school libraries, 11 of which are “bibliotchovas” – mobile libraries created by our organisation – which present themselves as a solution for schools where there are no physical libraries.
As part of our drive to improve the literacy levels of Mozambican children, we launched the bilingual book collection Livros para Começar (Books to Start With), which is a direct response to the need to help increase the number of children’s literature titles. Written in Portuguese by talented Mozambican writers such as Venâncio Calisto, Mélio Tinga and Vânia Óscar, they are translated into Xichangana by Wiliamo Muchanga and Mabjeca Tingana and feature illustrations by Suzy Bila, Marisa Bimbo da Costa, Samuel Djive, Ruben Zacarias and Ventura Mulalene. So far, we have distributed, free of charge, more than a thousand copies of this collection in schools and communities in Gaza province. We recognise and value the transformative power of reading and we are delighted by the smiles of the Mozambican and Portuguese children to whom we read the same story, in their mother tongues, allowing each of them to dream as big as their creativity allows.
In Gaza province, we have created six community “little schools” in rural areas of Chibuto District, which have been providing access to bilingual pre-school education that values nature and local resources. Over three school years (2022-2025), some 1,300 children aged three to six attended the little schools, and were provided daily with a meal, for many the only one of the day.
Created under the project Educadores em Movimento – Uma Educação Itinerante para a Primeira Infância (Educators on the Move – Itinerant Education for Early Childhood) (which has the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as its main funder and Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua, I.P. as co-funder), the little schools are a response to the lack of early childhood education in rural communities in Mozambique, where only 4% of children under 5 years of age have access to it.
With an office in Chibuto since 2009, and a Mozambican team, we have been valuing what exists in each community, building community shelters and latrines next to leafy trees, because we are committed to learning through nature, using materials available in the environment. In the bibliotchovas, we have broadened the range of reading and knowledge, using, among other things, the bilingual books mentioned above, games and toys. Many of the teaching resources are handmade by local craftspeople, including books made with local and sustainable materials, such as capulanas and rice sacks, in keeping with Mozambican culture and traditions. We have also trained 46 women from the communities, 21 of whom work in the six little schools as facilitators/"educators on the move" and, at the same time, promote the role of women as active and educational agents in the community. The leadership of these educational services rests on a community management model that, through parenting education activities, encourages the participation of guardians in their children’s education.
Recently, through the project Access to Water and Energy at the Chiconelane Little School, a drinking-water borehole and a Mini Solar Giraffe – an engineering project of the Carlos Morgado Foundation – intended for community charging, with solar panels, were inaugurated, infrastructure designed to guarantee water and energy resources essential for the running of the community little school and the primary school, both supported by AIDGLOBAL, in that same locality. The creation of the infrastructure was made possible by the company Deloitte, as part of its social responsibility, in the 11th edition of the Pact Fund Programme.
In a few words, this is the result of the work we have carried out in Mozambique over the two decades of our existence and which, with pride, allows us to say that the conditions are in place to Play, Learn and Grow in the community little schools of Chibuto, making children more active, perceptive, attentive and open to the world. Consequently, better prepared to enter official primary school.”
