Anglican Institute creche in Paraisópolis

On the last Sunday in July members of St. Paul’s cathedral and the Cultura Inglesa joined the mayor, Bruno Covas, his education secretary and others from the municipal government, at the Anglican Institute creche in Paraisópolis. A short ceremony was held to celebrate the start of work on expansion of the creche to enable it to handle up to 1,000 children and on construction of a new branch of the Cultura which will be able to provide English language lessons for up to 1,000 students. The creche expansion and the Cultura school will be built next to each other, on land ceded by the Prefeitura, and the construction and fitting out cost for both is estimated at R$16 millions, to be fully financed by the Cultura.

The Dean of the cathedral, the reverend Aldo Quintão, pointed out that the Paraisópolis community had been waiting 8 years for this expansion project, to eliminate the long waiting list for the current creche. He was very grateful to the Cultura for providing the funds to allow this to happen.

Alexandre Schneider, the education secretary and a member of SPAC, was able to announce that with this expansion of the creche, the demand for places for the children of members of the Paraisópolis community would be entirely satisfied.

Derek Barnes, speaking on behalf of the Cultura, emphasized the pride of students, staff and management in being associated with such a highly visible social project. He pointed out that the Cultura had traditionally devoted significant resources to assisting social projects run by other organizations, but that this Paraisóplis branch would be the first significant project of its own – providing free English lessons to this needy community.

Finally, the mayor, Bruno Covas, spoke of the urgent need to end the queues for places in creches in São Paulo and accepted full responsibility as mayor for the job of achieving this end. He thanked the Cultura for its role in making it happen in Paraisópolis.