TRAINING YOUNG RESEARCHERS FROM THE OUTSKIRTS OF SÃO PAULO FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

This work addresses the development of experience and results achieved in an extension project to train young social researchers, who lives on the outskirts of São Paulo. Through a partnership between the university and the social organization of the M´Boi Mirim territory, which allowed to mobilize a network of participating organizations towards a common goal.  Its result is a rich experience of social management promoting the role of young people to design and elaborate the research and help them to debate the solutions to the problems they experienced in the process, like challenges of acquiring higher education. This result is the co-creation of a research project by the young participants  being closely monitored and guided by the coordinating professors and partners, systematizing to diffuse knowledge about the subject, based on their personal experiences, transformed and improved by different research strategies. The region of operation is marked by occupation in the area of ​​water sources, causing an accelerated and disordered urbanization, marked by the scarcity of public policies and low income levels. Among the main difficulties, along with the precarious housing and urban infrastructure, is educational exclusion, reflected in the high dropout rates and the difficulties to access and remain permanent in higher education. This report highlights the challenges the higher education institutions faces to provide access and policies to maintain the student in the institutions  and the importance of extending the policies that bring the university closer to the outskirt, seeking the paths of  the inclusion of all the citizens.