In the context of the Vasco Vieira de Almeida Foundation’s partnership with Teach for Portugal, on 20 and 21 March Rita Marques, Patrícia Pereira Gomes, and Carolina Strungari participated in the Candidate Assessment Centres aimed at finding future mentors to participate in Teach for Portugal’s Leadership Development Programme.

With this programme, Teach for Portugal works to ensure that a child’s socio-economic background does not prevent them from achieving personal and professional fulfilment. With this in mind, it seeks to recruit mentors who will act as agents for change, both inside and outside the classroom.

This recruitment process is one of the most important steps towards building a movement of exceptional leaders committed to reducing educational inequality and capable of transforming the reality of the children targeted by the project.  

The Vasco Vieira de Almeida Foundation has supported Teach for Portugal, a Portuguese non-profit organisation and member of the international Teach for All network, since 2018. Teach for Portugal works in disadvantaged schools and aims to reduce educational inequality by offering children from underprivileged backgrounds the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Testimonials

“What an amazing experience it was to take part in a Teach for Portugal initiative as an evaluator of future mentors. Not only is this a fantastic project, which reflects why the VVA Foundation is a partner of this organisation, but the quality of the candidates and the professionalism of the organisation are second to none. It was a long and intense, but highly inspirational, useful, and fun morning. The feeling I always get when I do any kind of volunteer work is that I receive much more than I give. I came away with a full heart and all I gave was my time, experience, enthusiasm, and sense of humour!”

- Rita Marques, Senior Counsel

“This project was a huge challenge because I had to help decide on the recruitment of Teach for Portugal’s future mentors. The candidates were all extremely special people who want to be a part of a worthy project. I felt an immense sense of responsibility, but also a sense of mission accomplished, and was very glad that my experience could be of use. I loved getting to know the Mentors working for the organisation and learned a great deal from them”.

- Patrícia Pereira Gomes, Head of Office Services