Project
History

Started by the Brazilian couple Gino and Tate Silva in the late 80's, when both were under 23 years old. They prepared themselves for work among indigenous peoples, graduated in theology, letters and linguistics. Tate, on a trip to Bolivia, had a very unusual dream, in which she found herself in contact with some Parakanâ men, who at the time had less than 3 years of contact with non-indigenous society. One of the men identified himself with the name of Parrot.

In 1989, when they were expecting their first child, Gino and Tate headed to the mission field. In their first contact with the people, they actually found an Indian named Parrot. The indigenous people showed a strong interest in a school. After much analysis, the missionaries created an alphabet for the language used in the village, which until then was only spoken and not written.

In 1993 they started to teach some men to read. That same year they were removed from this indigenous area by a government agency and later gained land on an island, in front of indigenous land, where they built a house and resumed the project. Already with their two children, Gino was invited by the same agency that takes care of the rights of the Indians to teach in the village. After proving that the work they were doing was extremely important, they worked without any type of financial assistance from that organization and survived through donations from churches and support from people and from the production of didactic-pedagogical materials.

At the beginning of the work there were 2 villages, growing to 4 and today there are 17 villages waiting for social projects, training of indigenous teachers, with the biggest challenge being the budget for the production and development of reading materials and booklets in the language and its distribution to all villages.