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A company from Curitiba, in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, is teaching Lebanese children how to speak English. Positivo Informática has just exported to the country in the Middle East 50 units of E-Blocks, educational equipment that teaches the language to 5 to 9 year old children.
This first sale yielded US$ 35,000, but according to Juliano Fontes Fornasaro, the company's exports manager, new contacts are being made in the region, which point to a substantial increase in figures.
The E-Blocks are composed of an educational table, blocks, software, music CD, flash cards, teacher and pupil book. The screen shows images, music, animations and games, and the children respond to these stimuli positioning different blocs over a portable panel with optic sensors.
After concluding the four levels of the proposed learning plan, the child will have acquired a vocabulary of approximately 1,200 English words and expressions.
The equipment won the Brazilian phase of the World Summit Awards (WSA), in the e-Learning category, and will represent Brazil in the global phase, of which the winners will be presented at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in Tunis, Tunisia, from the 16th to 18th of November.
Expansion
Relations between Positivo Informática and the Arab market started in September last year, when the company participated, with their own stand, at the @School, the main educational business fair in the Middle East, in Beirut.
"It was excellent, we received many schools and distributors who were interested," reveals Fornasaro.
One of them was the organizer of the fair itself, the Lebanese GC Consultants, which signed a contract for the distribution of the company's products in Lebanon and Egypt. There are business perspectives, also, in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Fornasaro is enthusiastic with the perspectives opening in the region. "It is a market with great buying power but only a few educational technology products available," says the executive, who was surprised with the level of Lebanese schools. "The teaching is trilingual (Arabic, French and English)."
The exports director at Positivo Informática believes there will be an increase in contacts and sales as soon as summer vacations are over in the Northern Hemisphere. Apart from that, he observes, the Arab buyers like to know their buyers well.
"They ask for many references." As for that, certainly there will be no problems. The E-Blocks are sold to the United States - where they are used by the Hispanic community -, Portugal, Chile, Angola and São Tomé e Príncipe. China and Spain are markets where there are also good perspectives.
Company
Created in 1989, Positivo Informática is the technological branch of the Positivo Group. Acting in the national and international market, in the software and hardware segments, as well as providing capacitation services for teachers/users and technical and pedagogical support to the partner schools.
The company has 670 employees and its technological park is distributed in four units in Curitiba, covering an area of 22,000 square metres.
With its activities until then restricted to the governmental sector - where about 200,000 computers were installed - since 2004 the company has been acting in retail, distributing their products to a wide retail network in the whole country.
Amongst the softwares line, composed of about 70 titles, are the Disney educational programmes, with exclusive distribution in Brazil, and the Kid Pix, one of the educational softwares most sold in the world.
In the Educational Technology segment, the company's IT solutions are in 5,000 public and private Brazilian schools, with educational tables, IT laboratories, English Language softwares, translating pens, simulators and the entertainment and learning programs.
Positivo Informática - www.positivoinformatica.com.br
Grupo Positivo - www.positivo.com.br
Anba - www.anba.com.br
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