June 8, 2000 

The Thurgood Marshall Project

The Axe Project is currently developing a collaborative literacy project
between educators and students of Projeto Axe and those at The
Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change in Harlem.

Though separated by language and geography, Harlem and the city of
Salvador nonetheless have a great deal in common. As a collaborative
study of these two places, this project will focus on the participants'
experience as people of African descent. Through this cooperative effort,
the children-and teachers-of each country will gain insight into each
other's history and culture, as well as their own.

The culmination of this project will be a guidebook of publishable quality
to both of these places, containing thematic maps, photographs, personal
essays, poetry, and art work, as well as the more typical guidebook
entries. We believe that this experience will not only provide students
with the practical and social skills necessary to produce an informative
text, but also the ability to think critically about the reality presented by
that text. In addition, it is also our goal to have the teachers produce a
book that reflects on their own process.

To us, this project represents a concrete possibility of developing real and
sustained cooperation and exchange between two of the largest and
most culturally diverse nations in the world. More significantly, perhaps, it
also has the potential to foster critical understanding among, and create
social justice for, young people in both Brazil and the United States.