Entries are now open for the 49th Essay Contest, a unique initiative by Instituto Chamex in partnership with Redação Online. . O projeto, voltado para alunos do ensino médio de escolas públicas brasileiras estaduais ou municipais, tem como finalidade estimular as habilidades escritas dos participantes e prepará-los para a redação do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM). Uma novidade nesta edição é que os estudantes de escolas públicas matriculados na Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA) também poderão participar, garantindo que o projeto impulsione a educação continuada e o acesso democrático ao ensino superior. As inscrições são gratuitas e podem ser feitas de April 02, 2024 to October 18, 2024, using the registration page, available at this link.. Ao se inscrever, os participantes terão acesso a uma riqueza de recursos de estudo exclusivos, voltados para o desenvolvimento da escrita. This year’s proposed theme is: “The challenges of climate change: the relationship between compulsory migration and human rights violations.” The prizes awarded to outstanding students and schools in the 49th Essay Contest will comprise shopping vouchers as follows:

• Shopping vouchers for the national winner in the amount of BRL1,500.00 for acquisition of books.
• Shopping vouchers of BRL500.00 for purchase of books for students with the best scores in each Brazilian state and the Federal District.
• Shopping vouchers of BRL5,000.00 and 10 boxes of A4 Chamex printing paper for each of the three schools with the greatest number of corrected essays.
• Shopping vouchers of BRL300,00 for the purchase of books and an online training course for correcting essays in the ENEM model for the 20 schools with the greatest number of enrolled students.
• Shopping vouchers a video lesson plan and text correction on the Redação Online platform for the top 100 ranked students.

On the Instituto Chamex site, we offer a set of creative pedagogical practices developed by teachers who participate in our projects, together with educational materials developed by our partners. These resources can assist teachers to create materials and methodologies for improvement of the teaching and learning process, enhancing classroom results and experiences. In addition, we make two especially useful online books available for teachers and students wishing to prepare for the ENEM exam and the 49th Essay Contest, click here to access them!

Encompassing the 26 federal states and the federal district, the Essay Contest has had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of teenagers and education agents who encourage transformative initiatives like this. In the 2023 edition, over XX thousand public school students took part in the project, restating its position as the country’s leading essay contest in recent years. The theme proposed for the 49th edition is intrinsically related to the concept of environmental racism – the practice of relocating racially marginalized communities to areas subject to pollution, contamination, and negative environmental impacts, such as climate change resulting in extreme temperatures, floods, prolonged droughts, and son on.

Vulnerable communities, such as Black people, Indigenous, quilombola and riverine people, who already face economic and social hardships, are intensively more affected by climate change. Proof of this is fact is that dwellers of favelas and suburban areas and other socially vulnerable groups are 15 times more likely to be affected by extreme weather events than those living in other areas, according to a report released in 2022 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) linked to the United Nations (ONU). Additionally, these populations also suffer from environmental crimes, such as exposure to toxic waste. This phenomenon, known as environmental racism, becomes an even greater concern in face of the worsening climate crisis, which results in forced migration and human rights violations, requiring immediate action to address these environmental and social disparities.). Além disso, essas populações também sofrem com crimes ambientais, como a exposição a resíduos tóxicos. Esse fenômeno, conhecido como racismo ambiental, torna-se ainda mais preocupante diante do agravamento da crise climática, que resulta em migração forçada e violações de direitos humanos, exigindo ações imediatas para abordar essas disparidades ambientais e sociais.

Caritas Internationalis in October 2023 published data regarding the relation between
climate change and forced migration, taken from the study on the hardships faced by refugees in 20 countries. The report, entitled “Displaced by a climate in change: voices by Caritas on protecting and supporting people on the move,” points out that every year, over 20 million people are being displaced within the borders of their countries entailed from meteorological phenomena, surpassing the number of people ousted by armed conflicts. Such significant figures highlight the urgency to encourage debates, actions, and solutions to prevent human rights violations related to climate change and forced migration. International collaboration and dialogue between governments, organizations and communities are key to overcoming these challenges. The 49th Essay Contest, besides providing a platform for expression and reflection on such relevance issues, also inspires action and intervention in the search for a fairer, more sustainable, supportive, and inclusive future for all.

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References:

• Vatican News. Caritas Internationalis: os migrantes climáticos precisam de proteções definidas (climate migrants need to have defined protection measures) Accessed on: March 15, 2024. Available at this link.
• Federal Government. O que é racismo ambiental e de que forma ele impacta populações mais vulneráveis (What environmental racism is and how it impacts the most vulnerable populations). Accessed on: March 16, 2024. Available at this link.
• Greenpeace. Dia da Favela: Brasil precisa de planos para adaptação climática e perdas e danos nas periferias (Favela Day: Brazil needs plans for climate adaptation and losses and damages in peripheries). Accessed on: March 17, 2024. Available at this link.