Escola Popular de Boxe offers popular education for children in Niterói

Credit: Disclosure

By: Renato Silva / Lupa do Bem – Favela em Pauta

Created just a year ago in Morro do Cavalão, a community in the city of Niterói (RJ), the Escola Popular de Boxe serves the children of the community with boxing lessons from a teacher who, with strong speech and many dreams, defends the sport as a social transformation tool.

Initially, the idea was to create a project with technical courses and various activities for children. However, the passion for the sport made Mayara Gomes, founder of the project, as well as the people around her, realize that boxing would be the reason for bringing together the children of Morro do Cavalão.

Mayara says that, after the decision, she took all the necessary courses to fit the project and its activity in the norms defined by the federations of the modality. However, the purpose goes far beyond sport. “The intention is to use boxing as a tool for social transformation. Also bring debates, new looks, new perspectives. Allied to all sporting values”, she emphasizes.

Social transformation in practice

[…] the teacher who really teaches, that is, who works with the […] contents within the framework of the rigor of right thinking, denies, as false, the pharisaic formula of “do as I say and not as I do”. Anyone who thinks right is tired of knowing that the words that lack the corporeality of the example are worth little or almost nothing. To think right is to do right (FREIRE, 2002, p. 16).

In Pedagogy of Freedom, the last publication that Paulo Freire made during his lifetime, the author recalled that the practice must be allied to the discourse taught by the educator of the dreamed of liberating education. And, on these concepts, the Escola Popular de Boxe is based when Mayara affirms the transformation that she dreams of achieving through the noble art.

The founder says that showing new possibilities for the future through sport is among the project’s priorities, but that the real transformation takes place in everyday life.

“Children end up growing up, carrying many of the common social views, you know? Questions that arise in the classes, generating these debates. For example: when a child calls another child with some racist term, we pick up [these references]. At the end of the class, depending on the moment, I stop, have a conversation with them and bring up other racial issues. At another time, I have a conversation about questions about machismo, including them in the theme, without complex academic terms, but in a way that is close to everyday life”.

Project existence challenges

Boxing and many other sports are lacking in investment. In a publication about the performance in the last Olympics, the federal government website reported that the sport received R$ 6 million directly through the “Bolsa Atleta” initiative, translated into 431 scholarships, and resulted in 3 medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze.

However, in documents revealed by ESPN, in the “Dossiê das Contas”, expenditures in excess of BRL 3.5 million were revealed by the Olympic committee, during the previous cycle in Brazil, only with top hat accommodation on trips.

Faced with this controversial scenario, social projects are born that should have the destination of these official funds, as is the example of the Popular Boxing School. The project, which was created exclusively by the founder Mayara’s own investments and some friends interested in contributing to the dream, today does not have any official government investment, or even resources from public notices.

The founder recalls the contrast between results and investments in sports. “In the last Olympics, the sport that brought the most medals (3) to Brazil was boxing. And, even so, it is a sport little seen in the sense of public policies. There are few who decide to invest in the modality”, she analyzes.

How to follow and support Escola Popular de Boxe

To contribute to the project, it is necessary to contact the project profile on Instagram, and arrange the financial contribution or material donation. The biggest needs of the project are: purchase of equipment to help young athletes who need help with uniforms, tickets for training.

“It’s definitely the best way. Many go straight from school to train, so they need these things and a snack. Helping like this is the best way”, points out Mayara.

According to Mayara, the project’s dreams also involve achieving victories in sport, whether passing on values of sports competition, such as dealing with victories and defeats, the need for discipline, but also including athletes in competitions. Like the young Lincoln Reis (13), a student of the project, who will participate for the first time in a state boxing stage representing the school.