Cartas com Ciência

Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to pursue higher education and scientific careers, partly because of more limited access to science initiatives and role models, which would help them build a scientific identity and a sense of belonging. Cartas com Ciência develops educational programmes that promote science and language literacy among students from underserved communities in Portuguese-speaking countries, where ~72 million people are at risk of social exclusion. Our programmes pair each student with one scientist, based on their science-related interests and hobbies, for a personalized conversation via letter exchanges during a school year. The use of letters is inclusive for schools with no access to digital technologies, and makes the experience more memorable, besides promoting cognitive skills associated to handwriting. By increasing students’ access to the reality of science and scientists, our programmes bring students closer to the economic and life opportunities that science careers offer.

We are working to increase the access of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to higher education and science. These students are less likely to pursue higher education and scientific careers, partly because they do not see themselves as scientists, not knowing any scientists personally and having no or limited access to science initiatives and models. Our solution helps them build a scientific identity and a sense of belonging by connecting them to a scientist during one school year via letter conversations. Nearly 90% of students participating in our programmes “met” a scientist for the first time via the letter exchanges. We work with local schools and associations in Portuguese-speaking countries, where among a total of 250 million people, 72 million (28%) are at risk of social exclusion.Jobs in science-related careers are growing (80% in the last three decades) and are twice more paid than jobs in other areas, so we need solutions like ours to increase the access of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to the economic and life opportunities that these careers can offer.

Our solution is to develop educational programmes with schools and local associations in unprivileged contexts in Portuguese-speaking countries, in which students exchange letters with a scientist. Each student is paired with a scientist based on their science-related interests and hobbies, and they exchange three to four letters during one school year. Each round of letters has a theme, such as “research and careers”, “higher education”, “overcoming obstacles” and “inspire”. This allows students to access the world of science and scientists and imagine themselves as scientists if they wish so, besides increasing both their science and language literacy. To implement such programmes, we work directly with teachers or mentors, and together we make adjustments to the programme as needed regarding each context. We are also collaborating with researchers in education and science communication to measure the impact of our programmes and share good practices. We use cloud-like servers, email and video calls to manage the logistics of the programme (including storage of the letters) and to communicate with the teachers/mentors, as well as internally and with team members. We use post services to circulate real letters from students to scientists and back. 

We work with students (and teachers) from Portuguese-speaking communities with low socioeconomic backgrounds who have no or limited access to science and scientific initiatives. Nearly 90% of our students “meet” a scientist for the first time in our programmes. The programmes are developed based on the students’ science-related interests and hobbies, which are assessed at the beginning of the school year. Students attend elementary or secondary school, aged between 10 and 18 years old. Currently we have nearly a hundred students engaged in our programmes: two formal education classrooms in Dili and Coimbra (East Timor and Portugal, respectively), one non-formal education classroom in São Tomé (São Tomé and Príncipe), and one group of students supported by a local association (Associação Tira-me da Rua) in an underserved neighborhood in Odivelas (Portugal). In the next school year, we will develop programmes with six new groups of students: three formal education classrooms in Angola, Guinea Bissau and Portugal, two non-formal education groups in Cabo Verde and Mozambique (with Associação Educar and Girl Move Foundation, respectively), and one group of immigrant and refugee students supported by the association Lisbon Project (Portugal). We tailor each programme to the context of each classroom or group of children together with the teachers and mentors, and we have a team of volunteers backstage, thinking and designing the programmes, who come from seven of the nine Portuguese-speaking countries. Our solution promotes students’ access to science and scientific careers, as well as being in contact with a “real” scientist. In collaboration with research centers on education and science communication, we are evaluating the impact of our programmes, comparing students’ perceptions of science, higher education, language and self-value and esteem at the beginning and at the end of the programmes. This will give us a measure of the effectiveness of our programmes, which together with students’, scientists’ and teachers’ feedback at the end of the year (via questionnaires), will allow us to further tailor our programmes to the needs of all participants but especially our main target audience, the students.

Our programmes enable access to high-quality and memorable experiences that promote science and language literacy, in contexts with limited access to science initiatives. Our programmes also increase the engagement of students from low socioeconomic contexts in Portuguese-speaking countries by pairing each student with a scientist with whom they exchange several letters during one school year. Each round of letters is focused on a specific theme, including “research careers” and “higher education”. Teachers report that some students want to join their classes to be able to exchange letters with scientists, and that some start considering higher education for the first time.

Our programmes are based on the model established by “Letters to a Pre-Scientist”, which for more than 10 years organizes letter exchange programmes in English with underserved communities in the United States of America. We are developing this model in a multi-country context, together with communities in Portuguese-speaking countries. In the current school year, our programmes have involved nearly a hundred students, in four different groups: two formal education classrooms in East Timor and in Portugal, one non-formal education classroom in São Tomé and Príncipe, and one group of students supported by a local association in an underserved neighborhood in Portugal. In the next school year, we will develop programmes with six new groups of students in Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Portugal, half of them in partnership with local associations.

Our solution connects unprivileged students and their communities with science and scientists in a multi-country context. It was designed based on the principles of social justice, science diplomacy and development cooperation, linking the nine countries in which Portuguese is an official language (Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, East-Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe) through their students and their scientists. Its catalytic potential is multi-fold, on students, scientists, their communities and society in general via our communication channels. Currently the demand of scientists and teachers to participate in our programmes exceeds in ten times our current capacity. We expect that students will attribute more value to science, knowledge and education, and become more critical consumers of information. We expect that scientists will feel more prepared to interact with society, more sensitive to reaching underserved communities, and new scientific collaborations can stem from connections between scientists who share a language and a passion for outreach and meet through our programs. Based on the impact evaluation research that accompanies our programs, we want to publish its outcomes and a set of good practices, which will enable science educators and communicators in 4 continents to positively multiply the impact of such initiative. Having social justice at the core of our project will also enable and widen conversations about knowledge decolonization and the democratization of science.

We are currently serving 100 students. In one year we will be serving 250 students, and then we expect to reach 300 students per year, so in five years we will have reached 1250 students. Currently, we have also served 500 scientists through training, 100 of which are involved in letter exchanges and thus receive further assistance. In one year we will be serving a total of 650 scientists, and in five years we expect to reach 900 scientists. Regarding teachers and monitors, we are currently serving 4 teachers and in one year we will be serving 8 teachers. Each year afterwards we plan to serve 10 teachers per year, so a total of 52 teachers in five years.

We use questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of our programs to collect data on parameters such as students’ attitudes towards science, higher education and language (e.g. whether they see themselves as scientists, whether they think they are good in science, what words they would describe when thinking about higher education, etc). We also use questionnaires to evaluate impact among scientists (e.g. whether scientists feel more prepared, or more interested in doing public engagement, whether they gained awareness about reaching underserved communities, etc). To help us design these questionnaires and measure the impact of our programs, we established partnerships with two research institutions, one dedicated to educational sciences and science in education (CIDTFF, University of Aveiro) and one focused on science communication (ITQB-NOVA). We are looking to build such partnerships in each country we operate in, and we are currently assembling an Evaluation Commission with representatives from each country to accompany our project. We would also like to contribute and evaluate our potential impact on development cooperation, given the nature of the project and the involvement of nine different countries across the globe, more than half in the UN list of Least Developed Countries.

We have 40 people involved in our team. Everyone involved works on a volunteering basis. 

Our team members come from the different countries we operate in; we have seven out of nine Portuguese-speaking nationalities represented. These team members have different expertise considering their educational background – we have lawyers, educators, sociologists, researchers, communicators, linguists. Our team is thus multidisciplinary, and we have the right profiles to contribute to social change. In particular, the directors combined have extensive experience in science communication with children and in development cooperation, as well as capacity building in previous experiences.

The values and principles of EDI, knowledge decolonization and social justice are at the core of what we do, and guide our decisions and mission. This is stated and explained to each team member during our onboarding process. We are currently organizing EDI-related training for our team members, as well as for the scientists participating in the project. We have also taken part of different initiatives to support scientists from underserved contexts, such as scholarships to attend conferences and networking facilitation for projects design and implementation. We use our spotlight opportunities and space upon invitations for webinars and presence in press to bring with us scientists (and teachers) from underrepresented communities and nationalities. We pay special attention and care to the language we use and to become more accessible regarding our communication strategies, as well as to our own biases, views and assumptions

We believe that becoming a Solver would help us achieve our impact and mission goals, while creating sustainable and socially just operations. We would like to professionalize our organization by generating (paid) employment, and as a Solver team we would have access to funding that would help us move in this direction. We would also benefit from several experts and networks, especially regarding building a sustainable business model and defining sustainable strategies, as for the moment we do not have team members with a business or financial background. We are also very interested in the support provided in the 9-month program regarding monitoring and evaluation of impact.

One of our goals is to professionalize our initiative, such that it is financially sustainable and employs talent; at the moment we rely solely on talented volunteers. Thus, we would like to find partners who would help us design strategies for fundraising and/or a business model, or in more direct access to funds. We would also be interested in finding additional partners to the ones we already have regarding impact evaluation, and partners who could advise us on multi-country, multi-continent data collection. Having partners that could advise us on branding and global public relations could help us attract more talented Portuguese-speaking scientists from all nationalities to have a more diverse pool of role models to or pupils

We are looking for organizations that can help us professionalize our initiative, connect us to funders, help find a sustainable financial plan and strategies to attract and employ talent in several countries. We are also looking to partner with researchers working on science communication, science education and/or science diplomacy, to inform us and/or establish collaborations regarding our collection of data and impact evaluation. Working with organizations with PR and/or development cooperation work in the nine Portuguese-speaking countries could help us increase our pool of scientists in a diverse and equitable way, making sure more people know about our work and can join us. Also, improved communication can help disseminate the outcomes and good practices of the impact evaluation research we do. Examples of potential partner organizations would be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (USA), the United Nations Environment Programme, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal).

We have established a partnership with the Lisbon Project, that aims to integrate and protect the lives of migrants and refugees in the city of Lisbon, Portugal. In particular, we started collaborating to develop one of our programmes of letter exchanges with school-age children supported by the Lisbon Project, hoping to inspire them to consider higher education and scientific careers while connecting them to a scientist via the host country language and exchanging about subjects such as research careers, higher education and how to overcome struggles.

Our solution promotes more equitable classrooms by developing programmes with classrooms and groups of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Portuguese-speaking countries, to inspire them to consider higher education and scientific careers. Science-related careers are increasingly more relevant and predominant in society, with a growth rate of ~80% in the last three decades and an estimated growth of ~15% in the next one. Besides, the average salary in STEM jobs is twice as high as in other jobs. Thus these careers represent important economic and life opportunities, and thus we believe that it is critical to promote equitable access to these opportunities among students from low socioeconomic backgrounds; among the 250 million inhabitants in Portuguese-speaking countries, about 71 million (28%) are at risk of social exclusion.

We promote representation of girls and women in science and society in several ways: (i) our programs target entire classrooms or groups of children, so we do not choose students based on their a priori interest in science (which could potentially exclude girls, who are reported to show less interest in science-related areas as they grow older); (ii) our programmes involve female scientists as role models for both boys and girls in our classrooms; (iii) we are piloting a partnership with the Girl Move Foundation, in Mozambique, to develop programmes specifically with groups of girls in areas where school dropout rates prior secondary school are very high (~80%).

Our solution promotes more equitable classrooms by developing programmes with classrooms and groups of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Portuguese-speaking countries, to inspire them to consider higher education and scientific careers. In particular, our programs promote science and language literacy via letter exchanges with scientists, which are personalized and occur during one entire school year. Science-related careers are increasingly more relevant and predominant in society, with a growth rate of ~80% in the last three decades and an estimated growth of ~15% in the next one. Besides, the average salary in STEM jobs is twice as high as in other jobs. Thus these careers represent important economic and life opportunities, and thus we believe that it is critical to promote equitable access to these opportunities among students from low socioeconomic backgrounds; among the 250 million inhabitants in Portuguese-speaking countries, about 71 million (28%) are at risk of social exclusion.