Carlos Contreiras

Pioneer of inclusive education in Latin America

Carlos Contreiras (b.1982) is a Brazilian educator who founded EducaMundo in 2005, a nonprofit that has built 150 schools in remote Amazon regions using locally sourced materials. His Rainforest Classroom Initiative employs indigenous teachers to create bilingual curricula preserving 23 endangered languages. Contreiras' 2014 invention of the Solar LearnBox - a solar-powered portable classroom - has provided education to 80,000 children in off-grid areas across 8 countries. In 2018, he launched Mestres do Amigo, a teacher training program that emphasizes emotional intelligence, now used in 1,200 Brazilian schools. His Educate4Climate program integrates environmental stewardship into school curricula, inspiring 500,000 students to participate in reforestation projects. Contreiras' TEDx talk "The Forest of Knowledge" inspired similar initiatives in Peru and Colombia. In 2022, he developed an AI-powered app (EscolaMovel) that delivers personalized learning content via satellite to children in the Amazon basin, reaching 30,000 students monthly. His recent collaboration with UNESCO produced the Global Classrooms Index, measuring educational equity in 195 countries.