The empowerment of women of Angola

“From the moment in which the individual feels empowered and freer, it needs to help so that other people feel the same, so we can move toward a global transformation”

Paulo Freire

 

The Angolan Association for Education of Adults (AAEA), placed in the Luanda’s Province, in the city of Maianga, defends publicly values such as peace, justice, solidarity, tolerance, love the neighbor and equality between the citizens. The work that it accomplishes with literacy of adults did that AAEA were protagonist of a long matter on its history, its methods and results in the UniFreire Bulletin – Issue 01.

In this moment Angola returns to the agenda for a very special motive. It was launch, still in the first semester of 2013, a project focused especially to Angolan women, with the objective of strengthen and to enlarge the formation on equality of gender in the country.

In Viena, other city of Luanda’s Providence, also was chosen by the association to develop the project, the coordinators anchored in the principle of permanent education (what equilvalent, in several countries, to the notion of continued formation or, even its a different and approximate concept at the same time, of lifelong education) and dedicated themselves mainly to research on means and methods for the education non-formal, aiming to prioritize the most disadvantaged groups of society.

It was the result of this work in this specific context that originated the launch of a book, where were gathered different histories of successful experienced by the participants.

The project ‘Empowerment Of Women Of Angola through NGO’ strengthens the importance of formation of and for women and everything that involves the gender equality. The objective of the work is the change of behaviors, making possible to interfere in the paradigms in a way to contribute for the construction of an inclusive and fair society in Angola.

1.056 people participated in the Project, distributed in 32 different circles (groups). Indirectly 5.280 persons were benefited with the initiative, once that each participant shared their knowledge acquired with at least five people: the proposal demanded boldness in share the dream, but also and, mainly, in share the action.

Paulo Freire and Ira Shor (teacher from City University of Los Angeles, rhetoric expert and focused in several publications of Critical Pedagogy) in Fear and Boldness: the daily of professor (1986), a book structure in form of dialogue between the two of them to speak, among several other subjects, of a dialogic pedagogy, using the term empowerment in the context of education.

Differently from the Social Glossary, which is a kind of gathering of words that permeate social practices and that are developed by organizations very different organizations, in Fear and Boldness, Freire and Shor choose by the non literal translation of the term “due to the richness of the word […], which means A) give power to, B) activate the potential creativity, C) develop the creative potentiality of the individual, D) streamline the potentiality of the individual” (FREIRE; SHOR, 1986: 10).

In English there is no possibility of manifest the original sense of the expression coined by Paulo Freire, because a linguistic issue, involving suffixation: empowerment implies conquer, advance and overcome by that empowers itself (that makes it the agent of this transformation). The empowerment can not be donated or divided, as the term empowerment denotes, what makes the individual in passive, that is, in a certain way it is empowered.

The project was a work of big impact on people’s life. According to one of the coordinators – the president of the Association, Vitor Barbosa, was important to recognize the need of work more the equality of gender through actions that break barriers off all kind of order, since the existing ones in the family until the ones in the society in general, for that women have and live in practice the same rights and opportunities of men. There can be no human dignity is only a part of humanity lives with dignity.

Besides that Angola has a population of 60% of illiterate, is still visible that in the Angolan society a big differentiation as regards the appreciation of men and women, a situation that the project sought to transform.

To Freire, the issue of empowerment of social class involves the question of how the working class, through their own experiences and their own culture building, strives to obtain political power. This makes of empowerment much more than an individual or psychological invention. It indicates a political process of dominated classes that search the own freedom of domination, a long historical process that the education is a battle front (FREIRE e SHOR, 1986: 72).

In this perspective, AAEA uses a methodological set called APLICA/REFLECT, a freirean method, that, inclusive, won the UNESCO Award of Literacy in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2008. Applying the method and the project both in the field and urban area, REFLECT, that has Paulo Freire as main reference, also reference itself in Participative Rural Diagnostic (DRP). DRP is a mix of techniques and tools facilitating communities to conduct a self-diagnosis for, from then, to create an own management and development (more information on the method is available in Bulletin Number 01).

The testimonial of Fernanda Jambela Delfina, 43 years old, natural from Huambo, illustrates well the importance of the work developed by AAEA. There are 9 years that Fernanda lives in Luanda, because she moved to there to follow her husband. Once in Luanda she passed by several difficulties, but for her the bigger limitation were in the fact of not to know read and write. What more marked her throughout this process was that the study marked educated her. She asked for people where she could attend a literacy program, until she met someone that indicated to her the Circle. According to Fernanda Jambela Delfina: “With APLICA, I didn’t learn only to read and write, but over than that, I learned the education about gender, learned that I have rights and duties, learned to educate, to take care better of the children and today my life is better, and the life of my family also changed a lot”.

Among the geographical areas of intervention of Association are, in the Province of Luanda, the cities of Viana and Cacuaco; in the Province of Bengo, the cities of Dande, Icolo and Bengo. And, in the Province of Kwanza Sul, the cities of Sumbe, Amboim, Kibala, Porto Amboim and Seles. The initiative of the project is supported by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and by Norway Embassy.

The work team of Angolan Association for Education of Adults is formed by Vitor Barbosa, Fátima Ramos Sebastião, Alfredo Brandão, Altino Gaita Nunes, Arlete Lucas, Andre Brandão and Carlos Gourgel. Who wants to make contact can communicate through the e-mail aaeadultos@netangola.com