The "Happy Children House"!
It has been in 2004 when we discovered a small but very ambitious project in the south-west of Brasil. It is located in the city of Dourados and we co-operate with it ever since.
Why exactly a project in this city? Simple: Dourados faces the same challenges like many other cities in Brasil. We find some very few well-off and a great many of poor people living there. Most of the poor live in Favelas outside of the city borders. And in many cases the kids here have to provide for the whole family.
And even worse: As they cannot be touched by law, quite often it is exactly these kids that are being abused for crimes by gang leaders. They are used as drug messengers, as killers per order, or being forced to prostitution. Naturally, these kids are deeply traumatised.
The project "Casa Crianca Feliz" takes care of these kids. The aim is to rewrite their life's story. In doing so, they do not only receive education - but get their smile back. Not straight away, but with a lot of love and compassion quite soon.
Like that we help them to leave behind the tendency to chose violence as a first way out of their troubles. Also, we want them to serve as a positive example for the people they are surrounded by - as a sort of positive multiplicator.
But how do we decide who from all the kids in the area needs our support the most? A family pedagogue always visits the kids' home, evaluates the state of need the family is in and at first considers those living in worst conditions. That's how by today almost 200 children have been selected to be cared for on a daily basis in the project!
And this is how the kids are being cared for:
Apart from the daily school education the schedule is quite packed: Joint sports, joint meals, joint kitchen responsibilities. Or even joint courses that prepare them for a job in the future (e.g. cabinetmaking, cooking, tailoring, informatics or mechanician). That's how the kids can quickly find out where their strengths are, what they like - and which direction their future life could take.
When a kid is ready to leave the project, we try to keep contact even afterwards, e.g. by assisting them to find a local job. Because only then we can pave the way for a better future in the long-run. Some of the kids even did return and now actively work in the project themselves. Often by proudly telling their stories to the youngest ones: How they made it. How they found a job. How they changed their life. And how they did escape the Favela. And this is normally the moment when the eyes of the many listeners start to shine admiringly.