Talita

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hi, my name is Talita, I´m 18 years old and I live in the community of Vila Parque Cidade near Rocinha. I´m part of the Methodist Church in Botafogo where I´m currently the president of the youth. I participated in various missionary projects such as missionary trips to Bahia, Pernambuco , summer vacation bible studies with children from the Dona Marta community in Botafogo among others. One of my dreams is to become a psychologist and to be able to help others both in my professional life and in a nonprofit organization giving physiological assistance to youth and adults. Including when it´s needed for missionary work. I´ve graduated from High School in December as an honor student.

Even though I´ve always studied in privet schools I´ve done it with scholarships that have taken care of part of the cost of the courses. Because of it, I´ve have not been classified to received government grants such as PROUNI and not even have the possibility to apply to get into affirmative acts programs such as the Cotas for the Public Universities where I´m in the waiting list for reclassification. On the other hand, my dream almost became real when I passed the Vestibular for PUC- RIO in the first call and got 25% scholarship at UVA. Unfortunately, I could not get in college for psychology because I did not have the financial means to do it because I did not have the money to pay for the entering fee, monthly tuition, book, transportation. For PUC- Rio transportation won´t be a problem because I live near.

Because I passed in front of it every day on my way back home I was very motived to It was to study very hard and pass the Vestibular at PUC-Rio, it was a reminder to me of my great dream and never forget my goals.

My mother is retired due to incapacity of working and my father is unemployed and waiting for an answer from INSS, Social Security, to retire for time of contribution more than 35 years. Because of it, I´ve just started working part time to try to get funds for my future tuition.

