Parents often tell their children that the best inheritance they can leave them is to study. And it is no secret that education opens the panorama towards a better life. Unfortunately, however, not everyone has access to it.
It is in a world in which there are more and more children without the opportunity to study where we must act according to our possibilities and try to expand the opportunities of access to education services, which are more than support, they are a right that all children have .
Among so many sad stories, there are also those of success that inspire us to keep going and teach us that there is always some hope even if the path is not equally easy for everyone. Such as the case of Rosilene de Santana Souza, a Brazilian woman who reveals the hard childhood she had with her and everything it cost her to fulfill her dream of becoming a judge.
Rosilene lived with her parents and six siblings, in a community in the municipality of Oliveira dos Brejinhos, in Brazil. When she was barely ten years old, she was forced to stop studying because there was no teacher in her community school. However, this did not cut short her dream of continuing with her academic preparation, because two years later, she and her sister moved to another municipality where they could continue attending school.
It was there that her first job as a domestic worker began, when she was still a child. Rosaline shares that she and her sister shared the same shoes and the same mattress, in the kitchen of a family friend until she turned 19 and she was able to get out of there.
In 2003, they moved to Colatina, a municipality in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, with the intention of finding better opportunities to study and work.
My intention was to go to a place where I could work and study. Work for my survival, but studying has always been my goal. It was very difficult from the beginning. When I arrived at Colatina, I went to work with a family and I couldn’t go to university at that time because the amount I earned was not enough to pay.
– Rosilene de Santana Souza, for Television Gazeta Noroeste
Her job as a domestic worker did not give her a sufficient income, so it was not enough to support herself and cover the expenses of a university, so as soon as Rosilene saw the opportunity to study a free technical course on buildings that the Ifes (Institute Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Espírito Santo) offered, he did not hesitate for a moment.
Once the course was completed, it opened up better employment and salary opportunities for him. By working for a higher salary, she Rosilene managed to raise the money to enter law school, where she won a scholarship, her first step towards a complicated but rewarding life.
I worked from 8 am to 6 pm, and studied from 7 pm to 10 pm, so I only had until 1 am from that time to study more and supplement. It was a very difficult period.
However, with a lot of effort and perseverance, Rosilene managed to finish her degree and obtain her diploma, but she wanted to go much further. That is why she participated in more than a dozen contests to become a judge, a goal that she eventually achieved. Having won first place, the lawyer has the power to decide in which city she will work.
After suffering so much throughout her life, Rosilene is proud of what she has achieved to date. Furthermore, she shared that a difficult part of her childhood was the lack of resources. She remembers that she used to go with her family to the butcher shop to ask for remains of bones so that they could feed on her.
We see children looking for food to try to survive. So talking about education seems too far away. I went through that as a child. But what I can say to someone who has the same background as mine is to believe it. Education is the only way out for us, from our social origin, that we have no inheritance and no one to count on. Education is the path that can save lives, as it saved mine.