Carolina Videira

Carola is making inclusive education a reality by connecting schools, communities and the private sector in this joint effort. By developing practical strategies to incorporate empathy into schools, she is building an education system that benefits everyone.

Carolina (also known as Carola) is changing the way schools and communities' approach inclusive education, to meet the requirements of the Brazilian Inclusion Law, and to go further, benefiting society. She connects the education system, the private sector and communities to overcome barriers collectively, ensuring that no one faces the challenges of inclusion alone. Her organization, Turma do Jiló, works with teachers, students and families to influence the entire school environment with care and empathy, as well as with the practice of an inclusive pedagogy.

Teachers who feel discouraged by the challenges in the classroom are listened to by Carola and invited to innovate by creating inclusive and individualized curricula. The curricula are designed not only to include people with disabilities, but also to accommodate other student needs. At the same time, Turma do Jiló helps the schools that are part of its 360º program to deal with accessibility issues in their infrastructure, bringing in partners from the private sector who can help with adapting the infrastructure. Once a school has gone through its 360º program, it is able to continue innovating according to the needs of students and teachers, bringing in partners from different sectors. The success of this methodology has significantly reduced dropout rates - one pilot school went from 37% to less than 1% dropout after partnering with Turma do Jiló.

Carola builds municipal partnerships, prioritizing the level where important decisions about the implementation of public educational policies are made. After starting her work at the municipal level, she is now in the process of establishing partnerships with state networks and international partners. Other partners include foundations, universities, business investors and HR departments of companies that have inclusion as a principle.

School principals reach out to Turma do Jiló because they see the positive impact on the institutions that already participate in the program. Carola's work reinforces the need for investment in quality and inclusive education, preparing a more diverse workforce. Turma do Jiló's core work in the education system now supports a wider network of actions aimed at removing barriers to inclusive education. Observing that private schools remained on the fringes of rigorous application of inclusion laws, Carola created a youth volunteer program to introduce her model and methodology to students in these institutions. She also began working with companies to design and implement the hiring of people with disabilities, creating new opportunities for them in the job market.

Inclusive education is an approach that integrates special education into the mainstream education system, rather than separating students with special educational needs from their peers. Diversity and inclusion have been one of the biggest challenges in education and a barrier to the development of a fairer and more democratic society.

In 2015, Brazil enacted Law 13.146, known as the Statute of Persons with Disabilities (PCD), to guarantee the right to equal opportunities and the prohibition of any kind of discrimination. This was a milestone in the history of inclusive education in Brazil, requiring all public and private schools to offer education to PWDs on equal terms with other students. However, this achievement faced setbacks from 2020 onwards, when the Federal Government enacted a new law that provided for the possibility of enrolling children and adolescents with disabilities in specialized classes and institutions, segregating these students from non-disabled students. In a speech given by the then education minister, he stated that students with disabilities "hinder the development of others". Although the amicus curiae group Coalização por uma Educação Inclusiva (Coalition for Inclusive Education), of which Carola was a member, succeeded in advocating for the suspension of the decree, a measure that was taken a few months later by the Supreme Court, the growth of a movement opposing inclusion was evident.

In Brazil, at least 45 million people have some kind of disability, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and 67% of this population has not completed elementary school or has no level of education at all. The lack of access to education is also present in other groups - for example, 71.1% of students who drop out of the education system are black - which shows that the way the Brazilian education system is currently structured replicates inequalities that are historically rooted in society.

Although the law requiring inclusive education has survived the attempt to repeal it, schools face two major challenges in welcoming the diversity of people with disabilities into the education system. Firstly, many schools already face basic infrastructure problems, not to mention the inclusive infrastructure needed to accommodate PWDs, and lack the financial resources for the necessary adaptations. Secondly, in Brazil there are very few universities with specialization courses in inclusive education. Training for public school teachers in basic education rarely includes practice with a class of 30 or more students that includes people with different abilities and disabilities. In general, teachers do not arrive at school prepared to develop inclusive projects and curricula.

According to the Statistical Synopsis of Basic Education and School Census Microdata, carried out by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (Inep), only 5.8% of teachers in regular classes had received some kind of continuing training in special education in 2022. This means that, out of a total of 2,315,616 teachers, 94.2% had not received training in special education to incorporate these practices into their regular classes1 . Education professionals feel unprepared and unsupported to meet the demands of their students. Both the lack of funding and the lack of training mean that schools give up trying to implement changes and continue to perpetuate inequalities in the system.

Carola is tackling the barriers to inclusive education in Brazil from various perspectives: building a network of schools, education departments and companies in support of the idea that inclusion benefits the whole of society. Although her main focus is on the education of children and adolescents, her work is also attentive to all aspects of the employability cycle, from early childhood education to work environments.

As her main focus, Carola supports schools in implementing inclusive education and, at the same time, understanding the benefits that this transformation brings to the entire school community. Turma do Jiló's Inclusive Education Program (PEI) consists of a two-year program, the first year for implementation and the second for monitoring and adapting the program according to the school's needs. Carola and her team collect data to understand the needs of the students and assess the accessibility barriers in the school.

Secondly, Turma do Jiló trains teachers to mediate the learning and interaction of diverse groups of students with various abilities, including people with disabilities. Its pedagogical tools emphasize neuroscience from the perspective that all brains, without exception, can learn. It also adopts other active methodologies to overcome the deficit in teacher training, with special attention to different forms of learning. They are presented as resources for teachers to use in their teaching plans and individualized presentation of the curriculum, as they understand different ways of reading the BNCC (Common National Curriculum Base) and making the curriculum more flexible and inclusive. Teachers choose their students with the most learning challenges to draw up a lesson plan dedicated to them. Once this plan has been drawn up, the teachers present their ideas to the group and receive feedback from each other.

Carola sees cognitive empathy as a fundamental tool for bringing the different players in the school community closer together. In this way, she exercises the brain's ability to consider and imagine, listen and respond without judgment to the point of view of someone with a different experience. For example, in a conversation circle, teachers present their own challenges to the group and share how they affect their work. This builds trust and a sense of community that welcomes teachers' needs. These practices of listening and understanding model cognitive empathy as a tool for teachers in planning lessons for their students and for the other relationships in the network that Carola develops around a school.

Turma do Jiló also adds activities related to the theme of diversity and inclusion to the students' curriculum, leading them to develop projects based on a related theme. The students' agency is therefore cultivated, as each class can choose an issue of interest to them and discuss with the teacher the dynamics they would like to use to learn more about it. In the process, they also think about accessibility options for their own school, exchanging ideas with each other. The creation of a student council, for example, emphasizes the students' agency within the school environment.

The last element of Turma do Jiló, the program for families, offers support to parents of children with disabilities, encouraging shared experiences and a deeper understanding of their children's specific needs. They also receive anti-bias training and financial education training with accessible language.

Carola and her team also carry out an accessibility assessment of the school, ensuring that students with disabilities have the support they need to move freely and learn in the school environment. This comprehensive work is possible thanks to pro-bono partnerships with companies and specialized professionals.

The implementation of the Inclusive Education Program in Santana do Parnaíba serves as a successful example of the use of this methodology, as the Turma do Jiló approach has evolved into a public policy. Starting with a single school, its positive results for students led the municipality to adopt the approach as a public policy, with the aim of all schools and teachers being served by the professional and structural improvement program. This expansion, which impacted around 10,000 students and their families and involved approximately 1,000 teachers, led to a surprising reduction in school dropouts, which fell from 37.5% to 0.5%, including children and teenagers with disabilities who were able to access the local school, as well as other groups who benefited, such as students who had dropped out of school. After two years of implementation and revision of the strategies, the municipality now runs the program autonomously.

The start of this transformation in Santana do Parnaíba was catalyzed by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which approached Turma do Jiló to support a school in the town. The successful results of this collaborative work have seen the scale of the work expand from one school in the first year to two in the second and eight schools in the third year. Currently, 40 schools have undergone the training, and the municipality aims to reach 94 schools in the municipality. From the eighth school onwards, the model has been replicated by the municipal education department itself.

After collaborating with Turma do Jiló, the Public Prosecutor's Office compared the results of the schools assisted by the program with those of the schools not assisted by the program, also noting that the number of requests for transfers from teachers at schools not assisted by the project to assisted schools had increased significantly. In addition, students from private schools with learning difficulties began to submit transfer requests to public schools where the program supported curriculum development.

In view of these results, the mayor of Santana de Parnaíba and the Department of Education adopted the program as public policy, implemented by a team specially prepared by Turma do Jiló to maintain this replication and implementation in other schools in the municipality. Every year, the schools fill in a report so that Turma do Jiló can continue to evaluate the progress of the program in this decentralized structure. Santana de Parnaíba has become a benchmark for the program's impact and an example for other municipalities and education departments, which frequently visit the city's schools. Currently, Turma do Jiló has a waiting list of 180 schools to run pilot programs. Some of the schools they are currently working with have been recommended by partners, such as the FEFIG Institute, which will take the program to the north of Bahia, in eight municipalities. Carola seeks to create a network of educational institutions that already have resources and can finance her work in schools or institutions that cannot afford the costs of the program. Turma do Jiló's great potential comes from networking. They currently have a partnership with the Bradesco Foundation to reformulate the didactic material on Inclusive Education used to train teachers.

In the area of advocacy, they work with municipal departments for people with disabilities and have mapped parliamentarians who support inclusion projects in order to obtain financial support to serve these groups through parliamentary amendments. Carola is working in partnership with the São Paulo State Department of Education (Seduc SP) to implement and draw up the state's Special Education Policy (PEE-SP). Turma do Jiló will carry out a diagnosis in some state schools and, based on the results, will adapt a training course for the regional education boards so that they can replicate the model internally. Starting with two schools, the idea is that, as happened in Santana de Parnaíba, the departments can replicate Turma do Jiló's work on a larger scale. The São Paulo State Department of Education alone serves 5 million students.

Carola has also started spreading her model in private schools, through a youth volunteer program that organizes diversity and inclusion activities. She presents these programs as a way of promoting student protagonism, engaging young people in addressing global issues, promoting critical thinking and nurturing empathy for society's challenges. Not only do the students spend a whole year implementing their projects, but they also get to present them at international events, such as the Nexus Global Summit, expanding Turma do Jiló's capacity to make a social impact and establishing connections with global influencers like Malala Yousafzai. The volunteer program began to open doors in private schools, where Turma do Jiló found it more difficult to influence the creation of inclusive curricula and initiatives. This year, the Turma do Jiló group of young volunteers became an elective subject at an elite private school in São Paulo.

Carola's partnerships with the private sector have also expanded her reach in terms of inclusive hiring and employment. Her "Todos Juntos" initiative focuses on developing inclusion strategies for companies and preparing the top of the chain to welcome diversity. One example is the inclusion program in the production chain at Citrosuco, a juice producer with eight farms and 16,000 employees, which will start hiring and training people with disabilities to create a more inclusive and diverse environment. Carola also works with the social responsibility and marketing departments, supporting the development of initiatives in these areas in partner companies. The partnership with Suzano Papel e Celulose, for example, seeks to create an inclusive value chain, involving publishers who use their paper in the production of textbooks, for example. The profits from these partnerships and their work in private schools support Turma do Jiló's work in public schools.

Carola also strategically disseminates her knowledge to combat discrimination and promote inclusion through the Singularidades Institute's "Inclusion: Inclusive Practices and Management of Differences" course in Brazil, impacting various sectors of society, especially influencing future educators at the start of their careers and combating the lack of teacher training in inclusion.

Turma do Jiló is expanding its reach, working in partnership with municipal and state education departments in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. In addition, Carola is expanding the range of courses on Núcleo Jiló Educa, Turma do Jiló's online platform, to reach an even wider audience. With the aim of valuing the differences and abilities of people with disabilities and other minority groups, Carola plans to increase the number of companies that collaborate with the Todos Juntos program, encouraging the adoption of inclusive hiring practices.

Carola was born in Belo Horizonte. The middle child in a family of three, she moved around a lot because of her father's work. Carola's mobility and multiple adaptations have taught her to value diversity and appreciate otherness. When she moved to São Paulo as a child, she was bullied for the first time for having a different accent and being tall. During the same period, she also began to notice the social hierarchies that surrounded her in the school environment and in social circles. Carola began to feel uncomfortable early on and to question why people valued a surname and wealth more than personality and kindness towards one another. Her life journey and experiences slowly shaped her way of thinking about inclusion and formed the basis of Turma do Jiló work.

At 17, she decided to study physiotherapy to help people to have better life quality. She began working with people with disabilities at the Association for Assistance to Disabled Children. She founded a company to support better care for her patients. Through this work, she learned that physiotherapists charged for each home visit and, in order to make more money, never discharged patients. Carola challenged this culture by creating a different charging structure, selling the company later.

Her turning point as a social entrepreneur was the birth of her eldest son, João, who was diagnosed with disabilities. She received little support from her work colleagues at the company she worked for at the time and was told she would have to choose between her son and her career. Despite this challenge, she chose to do both and at the end of the year was recognized as the company's best employee. When she was called on stage to receive the award, she publicly resigned, affirming her position as a mother and deciding to use her time in places and in ways that would enhance her personality and her work.

As João grew up, she was told that he was incapable of learning. Seeking to provide the best opportunities for her son, Carola moved to the United States and discovered schools that not only accepted him but also transformed João's life. She was determined to prove that learning is possible for any child with a disability, not just her son. Carola decided to draw up a project to bring similar methodologies to Brazil, adapting them to the country's needs. It was then that Carola created Turma do Jiló, João's nickname, proving that everyone can learn and thrive in an inclusive environment that welcomes our differences. As an adult, Carola was diagnosed as a person on the autistic spectrum, which inspires her even more to continue her work for a world where everyone's right to learn is respected.