A street girl barely hanging on to the arm of CARF’s founder, Gregory J. Smith, on the Praça da Sé (Cathedral Plaza) in the center of São Paulo, pleads to be taken away from the dispair of drugs and violence on the streets.
Photo by Roar Christiansen - CARF.
Sandra surrounded by other street kids, sitting on a bench on the famous Praça da Sé (the Cathedral Plaza) in the city centre, a popular hang-out for the city’s street children back in 1993.
She was miserable, angry and tired of waiting because her sister did not run back to the streets with her from our recuperation centre. Accustomed to being together on the streets she hated having to spend time alone, but the wait lasted for six months when she was eventually allowed to come back to our centre, never to run away again. Since then she has grown up together with her two brothers and sister and is now a married mother.
See her ten years after this photo was taken.
Photo by Roar Christiansen - CARF.
Sandra, alone on a bench of the famous Praça da Sé (Cathedral Plaza) in the city centre, once a favourite hang-out for the many street children in São Paulo in 1993.
Rescuing street children is a painstaking, long-term job, where few organisations are willing to make such an investment. Could mean a long wait for children like Sandra above, already abandoned on the streets for some years.
See her today, ten years after this photo was taken.
Photo by Roar Christiansen - CARF.
Uploaded by carf on 23 Jan 05, 3.05PM PST.
Promic Introduction
From: Tonybrasil25
Promic is a non-profit organization that helps street children to get out of the street and drugs.
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Project Uerê is an organization in Maré which helps street children. Project Uerê is one of the locations Maria Schmeekle, professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, visited during her six weeks in Brazil.
Schmeekle, during her presentation titled "Poverty, Children and Hope in a Brazilian Slum," shared information about her work with the street children in Maré.
Maré is one of the larger slums in Rio de Janeiro. According to Schmeekle, there are many street children in Brazil.
"Street children are children who either live and sleep on the street or who spend a lot of time unsupervised on the streets," Schmeekle said.
Schmeekle worked with 420 at-risk youth at Project Uerê.
Some of the programs at Project Uerê include mathematics, games, healthcare, art and music, according to Schmeekle.
Schmeekle said Project Uerê also offers a unique service.
"The day begins with morning conversation. Kids can vent about what is happening in their lives," Schmeekle said.
According to Schmeekle, there is a lot of violence and crime in the slums.
Schmeekle became interested in working with the street children of Brazil because of Yvonne Bezerra de Mello.
De Mello came into the public’s eye after the Candelaria [church] Massacre of 1993. Eight street children were shot and killed in front of the church, and other children were injured.
In the aftermath of the shooting, de Mello became the key spokesperson for the street children and Brazil.
"She is one of the greatest advocates for the street children," Schmeekle said.
Schmeekle said ISU students, faculty and staff, as well as the community of Bloomington-Normal, can become involved in helping the street children in Brazil.
Schmeekle wants to start a long-distance international service learning program at ISU. "Service learning is community service with an intellectual component in the classroom," Schmeekle said.
"Long-distance international service learning will allow service to people in need, in areas too inaccessible or unsafe for college groups to get to," Schmeekle added.
According to Schmeekle, technology is making it possible for students to help others in need who live in dangerous areas.
"The youth at Project Uerê requested help with learning English," Schmeekle said.
"We can support them by sending DVDs to help with their English conversation," Schmeekle said.
Other ways to help is through fundraising and raising awareness of the problem, Schmeekle said.
"We can assist in these active projects to make real changes in these children’s lives," Schmeekle said
Michael Schafer, a recent anthropology graduate who attended the presentation said students should be aware of this global issue.
"It’s important to learn about other countries, and see how you can make a difference," Schafer said.
Pixote
1983 film directed by Hector Babenco and starring Fernando Ramos da Silva, about the street children in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Hummingbird Trailer In the beautiful coastal city of Recife, Brazil - a world capital for sex tourism - a couple of determined women decided they would try to break the cycle of domestic violence and get kids off the streets. Hummingbird goes onto the streets and sees the harsh reality these kids face and shows how these programs help break the cycle, giving people a chance.
Stripper Backs Aid Programme For Street Children In Brazil
A Norwegian stripper has offered to shed her clothes in aid of a project for street children in Brazil run by the Salvation Army, reports said Tuesday.
Julianna Skartland, 25, of Trondheim decided to offer her services after visiting Brazil earlier this year.
Bids were to be placed on an online auction site and for a fee of at least 1,500 kroner (245 dollars) the prospective clients would be offered a show and to dine with her.
"This is my way of supporting a project that aids the needy," Skartland was quoted as telling the online edition of Adressa.no.
A spokeswoman for the Salvation Army said they had not been contacted in advance by Skartland but accepted all donations "as long as they were not from illegal sources," news agency NTB reported.
Skartland said other strippers were welcome to support the initiative.
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Appalled by reports of death squads exterminating street children in the beachside city, she set her sights on the favelas of Rio. Yet this week, after nearly a decade dedicated to the children of South America, she met the most ghoulish end imaginable - hacked to death with kitchen knives at her Copacabana home alongside her husband and another colleague, apparently by one of the street children she had tried to save.
Ms Douyère first became interested in Rio following 1993’s "Candelaria Massacre" - one of the grimmest chapters of Rio’s recent history, when off-duty policemen gunned down eight street children as they slept.
At the time she was working with street kids in Mexico. "They asked her: Delphine, how can there be a country where the police go around killing children? Why don’t you go there and find out and try and help them?" said Marie Depalle, a close friend who works at the French consulate in Rio.
Over the coming years Ms Douyère increasingly dedicated herself to Brazil. In 1999 she completed her doctorate at the Paris VII University. Entitled Street Children of Rio de Janeiro and Non-Governmental Organisations, her dissertation looked at the plight of Rio’s street kids and the attempts to save them.
In 2000 she moved permanently to Rio de Janeiro and began working on a series of projects, including a non-governmental organisation called Terr’Ativa (Active Land), which sought to encourage sport as an alternative to the gangs.
Most of Ms Douyère’s work was in Rio’s cocaine-infested favelas, where she founded a series of projects intended to lure young people away from drugs and out of poverty.
In the Morro dos Prazeres - a notorious slum in Santa Teresa, a hilltop district popular with tourists - she set up a fashion school called Changing the Wardrobe. In the Morro do Fuba shantytown - where in 2002 Brazilian police located a series of clandestine cemeteries - there was a football project, sponsored by the Brazilian national team midfielder Juninho Pernambucano.
"She went wherever she felt she was needed," said Ms Depalle. "It was always difficult work but she wasn’t afraid. She was a simple person: faithful, kind, generous and happy."
One of her greatest success stories was Tarsio Wilson Ramires, a 25-year-old former street kid she met in the late 1990s and employed at her Copacabana-based NGO.
According to police, Ms Douyère recently discovered that Mr Ramires had stolen around R$80,000 (£20,000) from the project’s coffers. Fearful of being discovered, police believe he hired two men to help him kill the French aid workers.
Francisco de Moura, a doorman at the building where she lived and died, said Ms Douyère had recently argued with him after he refused to let a group of former street children into the building. She gave instructions for all visitors to be allowed to enter - whether they were street children or foreign diplomats.
Early on Tuesday morning, when two strangers appeared at the reception area alongside Mr Ramires, they were allowed in almost immediately.
"He arrived at the building with two other guys," said Ronaldo Gomes, a doorman who was on duty at the time of the killings. "I asked them to identify themselves and he said that they were with him and were coming to fix the computer.
"A few minutes later the residents started complaining to me that there was lots of noise and shouting coming from the apartment. I went up to see what was going on and he said everything was OK."
It was not. When Mr Gomes returned to the third-floor office with police a few minutes later he came across a scene from hell. Blood had been sprayed across the walls and Ms Douyère lay dead alongside her husband, Christian Doupes, and their friend and colleague, Jérôme Faure, 38. Two of the victims had been virtually decapitated by their assailants, who wore carnival masks to hide their faces.
Upstairs on the 10th floor, Ms Douyère’s two-year-old son, Max, played with his nanny, unaware of what had happened. "To see three good people killed in that way and an orphaned child was just too much," said Mr Gomes.
"We all heard the shouts but we thought it was a row between her and her husband," said Eliane Santos, who works in the florists across the road and regularly sold flowers to her French neighbours. "These people have to pay. They should be chopped up and killed just like they did."
Ms Douyère’s parents are expected to arrive in Rio de Janeiro this weekend to pick up their orphaned grandson and the body of their daughter.
"They were people who helped others," Joseph Doupes, 68, Ms Douyère’s father-in-law, told one newspaper. "I just don’t understand this."
This is an excellent blog by Gregory Smith, founder of the Children at Risk Foundation (CARF) that works with street children in Sao Paulo, Brazil. There is a wealth of information and links on this blog about street children in Brazil.
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