A renowned Faro researcher, the first Living Science Center in the country and Refúgio Aboim Ascensão, with a special focus on Children's Emergency and its creator, were the honorees chosen in 2013 by the members of Tertúlia Farense.
The informal group of Farense citizens met last week to award the distinctions and the 25th of April, which is celebrated today, was not forgotten, not least because one of the guests of honor was Captain de Abril.
Luís Villas Boas was at the session as a representative of Refúgio Aboim Ascensão, which he directs, but ended up talking about his “other life”, which had the colonial war and Africa as a backdrop. The man internationally recognized as the creator of the Children's Emergency concept made "three service commissions", that is, he spent six years in the service of the army.
“I have two lives. We all have multiple lives. Mine began at the age of 18 at the Military Academy and started again when I entered the University», after the war and the 25th of April 1974, of which he was a worker, but whose outcome proved not to have been to his complete satisfaction.
Villas Boas ended up dissociating from a revolution that, he considered, was taken advantage of by many who did not work for it and took a path that its main promoters did not identify with.
With this, social action will have gained. The now director of Refúgio Aboim Ascensão took a Psychology course and was invited to direct the institution in the same year he met it for the first time, 1985.
Since then, an institution that some members of Tertúlia remembered as having little expressive activity, before that date, began to follow a path that earned it national and international recognition. A work very focused on the protection of children at risk and their quick integration into a stable family environment.
“Refugio Aboim Ascensão has already supported more than 2500 children”, since the Children's Emergency was born and currently has “eighty something children”, he said. “92 women work there and there are always some who go 24 hours without sleep, since affection does not have a date nor does it care what day it is. Among them there are 24 degrees», illustrated Luís Villas Boas.
And, since it was a day of tribute, Luís Villas Boas reciprocated the gesture in the name of Refúgio Aboim Ascensão and invited Tertúlia Farense to visit the institution.
Live Science and the one that is being born
Science and research were equally in focus in the tributes that Tertúlia Farense made in 2013. On the one hand, the entity that shows Ciência Viva in Faro and, on the other, a researcher who gives birth to the University of Algarve (UAlg).
Adelino Canário is from Faro and one of the most prominent researchers at UAlg in the area of the sea. The director of the Center for Marine Sciences (CCMar), a research center associated with the Algarve university, was chosen for the much knowledge he generated or helped to generate and not was forgotten your participation in the Portuguese Polar Program (Propolar) in 2012, the first scientific expedition that Portugal organized and financed to Antarctica.
The university professor, who is also a university professor, considered it "significant that Tertúlia enhances research" and took the opportunity to remind that, despite a fifth of the knowledge about the Sea being generated at UAlg, the levels of funding for research at the institution are "less than half the average national".
“I think it could be a good development strategy for Faro bet on being a true university city», he considered.
The other honoree of the night, the Live Science Center (CCV) of the Algarve, in Faro, works in another dimension of this sector, that of the dissemination of knowledge. As the centre's director José Figueiredo, who represented the organization at Tertúlia Farense, recalled, this «was the first CCV in Portugal and was created before the Pavilion of Knowledge», which was a great success at Expo'98, in Lisbon.
Since its inception, more than 15 years ago, "more than 500 thousand people" have passed through this center, the vast majority of them children on school visits, not least because children from the 1st cycle and kindergartens do not pay admission. "In 2012, we had 12 paying visitors, 70 percent of whom were non-school audiences," he said.
«This is an award that gives encouragement and encourages the people who are there now and the managements who have been there before», summarized José Figueiredo, responsible for the CCV of the Algarve «a year ago».
Tertúlia has already distinguished personalities and entities from different areas
Tertúlia Farense distinguishes entities and personalities linked to the municipality of Faro since 2008. In the first years, the focus was placed on the sectors of culture, environment and citizenship, themes that were also very focused on the 61 sessions that the informal group of citizens has promoted since its creation.
At the level of entities, the Sociedade Recreativa Artística Farense (aka Os Artistas), the blog «A Defesa de Faro», the Municipal Theater of Faro, the City Museum, the Pátio de Letras, the Cineclube de Faro, ACTA-The Algarve Theater Company, CAPa- Center for Performing Arts of the Algarve, Orquestra do Algarve and the association Almargem.
At the level of personalities, professor José Louro, landscape architect Fernando Pessoa, plastic artists Fernando Silva Grade and Manuel Batista and the bookshop from Faro Antonio Simões.
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