Day care and preschool – We believe children are by nature interested in their own learning process, and so the children’s interests and motivations are at the core of our day care and preschool.
Cooperation and education – We believe that cooperation is the best way to achieve the common good, and so we participate actively at the local Child and Youth Protection Commission, and with all other agents that seek the welfare of the whole community. Instead of setting up our own primary school, we gave new life to a local public school that was about to close due to lack of students. We developed a collaborative project – along with the teachers, the parents, the schoolchildren and the school board – that makes learning and teaching much more motivating.
Schoolbook reuse – We believe that a society where goods are shared and reused is a better society, so we set up a schoolbook reuse plan, where hundreds of people have given their old schoolbooks, and have found the books they need.
Affordable care – We believe that everyone should have access to quality care regardless of their lack of sufficient funds, so we are getting together a specialist practice at reduced rates, where we currently offer Psychology and Speech Therapy appointments.
Transformed families – We believe that families should not be helped, but transformed – so they stop depending on hand-outs, become more resilient and develop stronger bonds with each other. So, we are fundraising for a Family Meeting Point.
Music and the arts – We believe that arts, and music in particular, have the power to make children more sensitive, attentive and intelligent; so we cooperate with the Alcobaça Music Academy in supplying Extracurricular Activities to all schools in a school board nearby.
The common good – All this because the Alcobaça Baptist Church saw its role as not simply doing good to its own members but to the whole community, and so they founded us in 1993 – and it continues to support us.
A beginning – We believe this is only the beginning: there’s much more to be done with children, youth, families, the elderly. If you share this vision of teaching and transformation for the common good, then please join us.