The Project Mais Português, funded by the Civil Society Support Office of the Prime Minister’s Office (GASC-GPM), supports a bilateral partnership between Fundação Oriente and FONGTIL (East Timorese Non-Governmental Organizations Platform). This project aims to disseminate the history and identity of Timor-Leste, integrated into Portuguese-speaking culture through one of its official languages, the Portuguese language, and enriching the linguistic knowledge of the participants in the various initiatives promoted under this project. Thus, the project promotes diverse cultural and educational-pedagogical initiatives, among which Portuguese language courses.

In this context, at the request of the Director of the Becora Jail, a Portuguese language course will be administered to 54 inmates, an initiative that will be replicated in other prisons in Timor-Leste in the near future. The inauguration of this course took place on February 14 at 9:00 am and was attended by the Minister of Justice, the Portuguese ambassador to Timor-Leste, the GASC-GPM Coordinator, the Director General of the Ministry of Justice, the Director the Prison Service, the Delegate of the Fundação Oriente, and representatives of FONGTIL, hosted by the Director of the prison of Becora.

The Minister of Justice, Manuel Cárceres da Costa, defended that “the Portuguese language will help prisoners to prepare better for the future, after liberation” and José Pedro Machado Vieira, ambassador of Portugal, also stressed that “education constitutes unequivocally a privileged tool in the process of social reintegration, as well as an essential means of training for the exercise of other equally universal rights”.