São Paulo – Web portal Memorial Digital do Refugiado (MemoRef, the Digital Memorial of Refugees) was launched last Thursday evening (10) at Teatro Adamastor theater in Guarulhos, in the São Paulo metro area. The site features written accounts, video, sound, photos and interviews with refugees.
It is the outcome of a project by seven Language students at the Guarulhos campus of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), who taught Portuguese classes to the immigrants and organized cultural activities. The students took turns teaching weekly lessons to 20 refugees from Syria, Cameroon and Nigeria since late August. The material made available at the portal is based on what these students have experienced.
“We are launching the memorial today with the intention of making it a collection for student and academic research,” said Ana Flávia Ercolini Ferreira, one of the organizers of MemoRef. “In this memorial you will find our photographs, the activities and audio of the students telling a bit of their stories and their expectations, as well as written texts. The collection is being launched with a few documents we have, and as the course progresses in the next few years, we will feed new data into it,” Ferreira said.
“The language barrier is the first one they encounter. Without speaking the language, they cannot go to a grocery store, buy food, ask for help or get a job. Without a job, they can’t get money or bring their families to be with them,” said Marina Reinoldes, another of the MemoRef organizers. The Portuguese course created by the students was welcomed by the refugee community living in Guarulhos.
A social worker at the Caritas of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, Adelaide Pereira stressed the uniqueness of the project, which was created and developed by students. “The Portuguese course is extremely important, and particularly the MemoRef, which was created by young people who are aware of the refugee issue and who embraced this project at the university, they brought the reality of refugees into the university, and the project can spread the word about their reality to so many young people,” she said.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
