03.02.2023

Beacon Institute is launched in 2023

By Gabriel Oliveira

Beacon is committed to developing and promoting affirmative practices in favor of racial and social equity, thus contributing to raising the students’ awareness and a diverse and inclusive community, where students, teachers, employees, and families feel safe and part of the group.

Diversity expands learning opportunities and enriches the life experiences of all students. By doing so, they develop their capacities to be open-minded, collaborative, conscientious, and empathetic people. Thus, in 2023, the Beacon Institute was born, with the mission to expand diversity and inclusion in the community. 

Beacon has already made inclusion a priority. The “Retreat”, a moment for training the educational, operational, and administrative teams, has been working on literacy for all audiences. In 2021, the employees developed a critical vision toward racism and had a series of lectures in 2022 that addressed issues such as race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and PWD. 

In 2023, 103 of Beacon’s scholarship students were children of employees, which creates a more diverse environment within the classrooms. In addition, the school identifies talented young people from public schools and offers them the opportunity to improve their English skills and study at Beacon through two programs: Beija-flor and Bolsa Jatobá. 

Today, the Jatobá Project has 47 students graduating from the Beija-flor Program and 22 scholarship students in 2023. The Beacon families, who support the project financially, make up the BCA (Beacon Community in Action), which is part, along with the Student Well-Being Center, of a support network for the scholarship students. With the Beacon Institute, the intention is that the Jatobá Program will represent, over the next 7 years, 10% of the students from Middle School and High School.

The Beacon Institute has three fronts of activity: selection and admission of students, welcoming and supporting students and their families and, finally, fundraising. The project’s goal is to create a network of investors in education that can change the lives of young people, reduce social and racial inequalities, and enrich the experience of Beacon students.