Brazilian students receive honorable mention in the biggest science fair in the world

Note from BW of Brazil: In the past few decades we’ve seen black Brazilians making strides in a number areas outside of the realm that is generally reserved for Africa’s descendants in Brazil. We’ve seen women working in civil construction, architecture and design, pharmacology, the law, literature, classical music, classic dance and gymnastics, among numerous other areas. The issue is now the necessity of continuing and increasing these advances to overcome the widespread stereotypes that Brazilian society continues to harbor against its black population. 

The subject of the young ladies’ project featured in today’s post continues to be a necessity as the vast majority of African descendants in Brazil continue to face cultural forces that encourage them to flee from a black identity or have been indoctrinated with negative feelings about being black. Congratulations to these young women who hail from the city of Antônio Cardoso in Bahia, which is recognized as the blackest city in all of Brazil in percentage terms. 

Bahian students receive honorable mention in the biggest science fair in the world

The duo developed a project for strengthening black and quilombola identity in the city of Antônio Cardoso, in Bahia

From the newsroom with Taylla de Paula*

Bahian students Beatriz de Santana Pereira and Thayná dos Santos Almeida received an honorable mention in the biggest pre-university science fair in the world, the International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

The students Beatriz de Santana Pereira and Thayná dos Santos Almeida received honorable mention at the Intel ISEF.

The awarded work was a project to strengthen the black identity of the seven quilombos that exist in the city of Antônio Cardoso, in Bahia. The award was presented by the Organization of American States (OAS). The young women joined the entourage of finalists who represented Brazil at the Intel ISEF.

“Today, the people of my community are proud to recognize themselves as quilombolas. The whole process of research helps to raise consciousness of what it is to be black,” said Thayná, who is resident of the quilombo Paus Altos, to Correio24horas before boarding.

A Correio report inspired the school project

The project was born out of the report Cidade Negra (black city), published in the November 20^th, 2012, edition. The article shows that Antônio Cardoso – city of 11,500 inhabitants in the Central North – is the only municipality in the country where more half the population (50.65% exactly) declared “preta” (black) in the Census of 2010, according to IBGE data.

Constantly cited as the blackest city in the country, Salvador (Bahia) occupies the 37th position in the ranking. Although it is the leader in absolute numbers, the 743,718 soteropolitanos (natives of Salvador) that declared themselves pretos represent only 27.8% of the population. Considering the sum of preto and pardo (brown), it comes to 79.47%.

And in this ranking (preto + pardo) Salvador is not even among the first 200. The leader is Serrano do Maranhão (state of Maranhão), with 94.76% of the population having declared themselves preta or parda. Antônio Cardoso comes in 8th with 91.67%.

Science fair

In total, Brazilian students won 12 awards, being four from the fair and eight special prizes, including the honorable mentions. “Every year, we have seen more recognition of Brazilian projects at Intel ISEF and this is a result of the increasing quality of the science they produce,” said Fernanda Sato, manager of education for Intel Brazil.

The organization highlighted that 50 finalists developed projects whose objective is contributing to the regional development of their students’ places of origin. The Feira Internacional de Ciências e Engenharia da Intel (International of Sciences and Engineering of Intel) 2015 is funded jointly by Intel and the Intel Foundation with awards and additional support from dozens of other corporate, academic, government and science-focused organizations. This year, approximately US$4 million were distributed as prizes.

* With collaboration of Taylla de Paula, a student of 8th cohort of Correio de Futuro

Source: Correio 24 Horas