REPORTER: Giovana Vitola
She may look like an ordinary 14-year-old, but Brazilian schoolgirl Isadora Faber is far from average. In Brazil, she's famous - and it's all thanks to a simple blog she created to document problems at her public school, using her phone camera. She demanded better teaching conditions and improvements to the dilapidated classrooms. Despite achieving these things, she has faced strong opposition - even death threats - but she has never backed down.
GENI, TEACHER (Translation): Poor girl, she was crucified alive.
A darling of the traditional media, Isadora owes her success to social media. Her Facebook page now has more than 500,000 followers.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): It makes me happy knowing that things changed thanks to the Class Diary. But the only thing I did was to claim our right to good quality public education.
PRESENTER (Translation): Because you are a public school student. The way she speaks... I'm a bit intimidated here.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): I'm Isadora Faber, 14 years old and I am a public school student. Education is a very serious matter but very little discussed. I am here to tell a bit of my story, the Class Diary, a fan page that I created...
Isadora lives with her parents and sister in Florianopolis.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): I love you very much, never forget it. But I always forget it.
Here at home she is just an ordinary teenage girl.
SISTER (Translation): She is shy, the shyest of us all, but once her shyness is gone, she is a pest. Then she is the most annoying one in the family.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): Let's go? Let's take her there? You are going out, aren't you?
Class Diary began in 2012, when Isadora attended this public primary school in Florianopolis.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): The wall here was covered in graffiti but there were no bars, nor the gate here. And that glass there was broken...
There were plenty of areas that needed improvement. When Isadora completed her primary education last year, she left the school in better conditions than she found it.
REPORTER (Translation): Were you surprised seeing the improvements at the school?
ISADORA FABER (Translation): For me it was a surprise, because they didn't tell us anything. Just when I arrived at school, two city council trucks were unloading doors, everything, to fix the problems.
Isadora didn't start her activism alone. In the beginning, her best friend and former classmate, Melina, was her blogging partner.
MELINA (Translation): We were quite unhappy with our maths teacher, he couldn't control our class. That was how the Class Diary started. I don't think that it made much difference, with me or without me, the Diary would still succeed because it was done for a very noble cause.
Despite the improvements they achieved, Isadora and Melina were met with a lot of opposition within the school community.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): They asked us to the headmistress's office to tell us that our parents were going to jail because we were committing a crime, that we couldn't do that.
Eventually, the pressure became too much for Melina.
MELINA (Translation): The Class Diary was getting too famous and we were getting too many threats, my parents got too worried, they thought it would be better for me to leave it.
Isadora, though, decided to keep going.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): Negative criticisms... depending on whether they have good arguments, I read them. I like to know the other side, I always think about the other side. But sometimes people say "I don't like you." I really don't care.
But soon, the threats escalated and reached the family home.
MEL, ISADORA'S MOTHER (Translation): We were here, outside with friends, and we always bring grandma with us - she was with us in her wheelchair. Suddenly, rocks were flying around, a rock hit grandma over her eyebrow - they were quite large rocks and I took it as a reprisal, to intimidate, to make Isadora give it up, to stop.
REPORTER (Translation): She even had death threats, didn't she?
MEL (Translation): She did, yes - on the internet, on Faceboook. "I'll kill you." It was that clear. Of course we were afraid, without a doubt, it was a huge worry.
REPORTER (Translation): Did you ask her to stop?
MEL (Translation): we kept talking to her and she never wanted to stop, she never wanted to give up. At the end of Year 7, we asked if she wanted to leave that school and she said "No", that she wanted to finish there. Fine then, what was left for us was to support her.
REPORTER (Translation): Was it worth it?
MEL (Translation): For sure, very much so.
GENI (Translation): All those comments and gossip here, gossip there...
Geni is one of only a few teachers prepared to talk to Dateline about Isadora.
GENI (Translation): At the school, the talk was like an atomic bomb went down because it exploded in such a way that it was discussed everywhere. It was said that the poor girl was really troubled.
MEL (Translation): I got worried when I got a call from the school, asking me to go there. The headmistress told me "She is showing school photos on the internet and this is a crime, it is not allowed." I said "Well, if this is the issue, I am not even going to the meeting, because there is no crime in that - it is a public building, she can, yes, take pictures and show them and show them on the internet. She is not committing any crime."
TEACHER (Translation): We could see that all the reports were directed by the mother and didn't reflect the reality of the public schools.
TEACHER 2 (Translation): Teachers felt totally defenceless, they were at a loss as to what to do and on top of that, the girl was using her phone to film the class, to film colleagues, to film teachers.
Isadora insists her only motivation is to improve the quality of public schooling. She has inspired many like-minded students to share their own school experiences. Some of them are shocking.
WOMAN (Translation): Some people think they are people, but they are shit, like you!
CHILD (Translation): What?
WOMAN (Translation): No respect to the class. Go! Go and don't come back!
REPORTER (Translation): Has she revolutionised public education in Brazil?
EDUARDO DESCHAMPS, SECRETARY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION, SANTA CATARINA (Translation): Maybe Isadora was the most visible face in this process, she was not the only one doing it, maybe hers had more impact, due to the way it was used in social media. In my opinion and also here at the Department of Education, this should not be seen as a threat in itself, but as extra help...so we can act and fix the problems sooner.
Isadora is getting ready for a special event.
MEL (Translation): How do you feel Isadora?
ISADORA FABER (Translation): I am quite anxious...and quite happy as well.
Just two years after starting Class Diary, tonight is the official launch of a book she was asked to write.
WOMAN (Translation): I came because what Isadora is doing is very important, valuing education, or showing the point of view of a student relating to education. I think it makes public policy makers think about it.
ISADORA FABER (Translation): Truth be told, for me, we just stood up for our rights. For me it is not such a big deal, "Wow, how did I have this idea?" Just demanding our rights, but I am really happy to have inspired others, it is pretty cool.
So far, whenever I complain, within one week they fix it.
Reporter/Camera
GIOVANA VITOLA
Producer
NICK OLLE
Editor
MICAH MCGOWN
Graphics
MICHAEL BROWN
Translations/Subtitling
BEATRIZ WAGNER
5th August 2014