Feed a Hungry Child in Brazil Today

Dear Supports

Students at Educandário Creche Comunitária Sonho da Vovó Clara – an independent, community school offering free of charge education and food to the children of Mata Escura in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil – have just returned to classes after a 2 week break for the São João holidays. Although religious in origin, São João (or St John) has changed over the years to become a celebration of the countryside and rural traditions. In the regions surrounding Salvador, Brazilians celebrate by dressing in simple country styles, preparing traditional foods and dancing to forró – a musical style originating in the North East and based on a combination of accordion, zabumba bass drum and triangle. School staff arranged a São João celebration at the school – a great opportunity for the children to learn about these traditions and their rural roots. Many of our students’ parents migrated to Salvador’s favelas from the state of Bahia’s enormous rural interior in search of work. Bahia’s countryside is harsh, towns are isolated, the land is dry and difficult to cultivate, industry is almost non-existent and deprivation is rife. Opportunities are so limited that young people are forced to migrate to major cities such as Salvador to seek a better life for their families There have been some other big developments at the school in recent weeks. Our wonderful schoolteacher Andrea has been petitioning a local educational organisation to come to the school and provide some workshops for the teaching staff. Her tireless efforts came to fruition last month when the organisation sent a team to the school for 2 days of workshops with the teachers and students. They helped the school staff to create new ‘play’, ‘creativity’ and ‘relaxation’ zones in the classrooms and imparted many ideas on teaching methods and activities. They also coordinated a number of fantastic craft sessions with the children – some photos of which you can see below. A great time was had by all the students and the teachers gathered loads of new ideas and inspiration. 

Another bit of dogged persistence from Andrea also came to fruition last month, when a Salvador based street art group came in to brighten up the school with fabulous new murals and conduct a graffiti workshop with our older children. The school looks colourful, unique and vibrant since their visit and the inspiration and positive role models they offered to our older students were wonderful to witness. For the first time ever our older kids think the school looks ‘muito legal’…or ‘very cool’! One of the new murals features a representation of Vovo Clara (Grandmother Clara) from whom the school derives it’s name. Vovó Clara was a local woman, Maria. Maria was born on 12th August 1912 to a very poor family. She married young, had 6 children and raised a further 5 grandchildren. Although she was illiterate, she always instilled in her children the importance of education and despite great financial and social constraints 2 of her children went on to graduate as teachers - an incredible achievement for a family facing such difficulties.

This achievement brought Maria particular pride as teaching had always been the profession she had most admired and wished she had been able to pursue. Since an early age she had harboured a dream to open a creche and community centre to help the needy in her local community. As she entered old age she increasingly began to offer shelter and food to abandoned and needy children and vulnerable elderly people in the favela. She became well known locally by the nickname ´Vovó Clara´ or ´Granny Clara´ and worked tirelessly to help those in need - opening her humble residence to all those who needed her help and treating them as if they were her own children.

Maria tirelessly continued this benevolent work for many years and was a much loved figure in the local community. Unfortunately she eventually became frail and on the 26th January 1993 she passed away, aged 81, not before she had returned to school and learnt how to read and write - her belief in the importance of education never waned.

For 10 years after her death, her son Eraldo did not stop pursuing the dream of finally opening Maria’s creche. In 2000 he achieved his aim and the Educandário Creche Comunitária Sonho Vovó Clara opened it´s doors, offering free education, childcare and food to Mata Escura´s neediest children. We are so happy there is now a lasting tribute to Maria on the walls of the creche so that her story will be passed on to our future students. 

With Grattitude,

Brazil

Dear Supporters, 

Students at Educandário Creche Comunitária Sonho da Vovó Clara (ECCSCV) – an independent, community school offering free of charge education and food to the children of Mata Escura in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil –broke up in early February for the most important holiday of the year in Brazil; Carnaval! The Carnaval celebrations in Salvador are the largest in the country –over 600,000 tourists visit each year for the week-long festival. School is closed during Carnaval week, a public holiday, during which time many people travel back to visit family in Bahia state’s rural interior.  For other families Carnaval offers a much-needed opportunity to earn some money. Small enterprises spring up all over the beachfront district during this period, and a very large number of the city’s children earn money that week selling drinks, snacks and souvenirs and finding parking spaces for drivers. Unfortunately, there is a darker side to Carnaval – crime rates (already amongst the highest in Brasil) take a dramatic rise during this week. Pickpocketing and drug dealing reach endemic levels and children, owing to their size and protection from prosecution are sadly often involved. It is the continued work of our school to try and protect our students from becoming involved in Salvador’s criminal side.

Whilst the school was closed our teacher Andrea worked tirelessly to refresh the classrooms for the new academic year. Fabulous new signs and posters have gone up on the walls, really brightening up the classrooms and reinforcing some of our core values and the wall of our classroom for older students, which now features a quote from Nelson Mandela – ‘Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world’ – maintaining our older students’ focus on learning and helping to protect them from the city’s gang violence is a huge part of our work, this was a great choice of quote by Andrea.  

A lot of the other work in the school has been designed to make the classrooms as welcoming as possible for the new academic year. Students returned to lessons at the end of February and we were so delighted to welcome an entire class of new young faces – something only made possible by your donations. The ‘Rutina’ (routine) for each school day: ‘Acolhida’ (welcome & roll call), ‘Rodinha’ (sitting in a circle and talking/singing as a group), ‘Café’ (breakfast), ‘Atividades’ (lessons), ‘Recreação’ (Outdoor play or games/reading), ‘Higiene’ (Children have access to shower and brush their teeth), ‘Almoçar’ (Lunch), ‘Descansar’ (Afternoon nap – important as many children have disturbed sleep patterns at home), ‘Despertar’ (Wake up – activities and exercises to wake everyone up) ‘Lanche’ (Afternoon snack), ‘Musica’ (songs and music to finish the day) and finally ‘Saida’ (home time).  Setting up a clear structure for the day has really benefited our students and improved concentration levels. School runs from 7:30am till 4:30pm, helping parents and carers to go to work. Our extra intake of students now means we have 5 classes running – with teachers Andrea, Ana, Dora, Nilza and Ivone.

Andrea and the other school teachers have been putting together a fantastic school library twith story and picture books for the young students and factual texts to help the older kids with their homework and college studies. The library has already proved very popular, we’ve even seen children choose story time in the library over football at break time! All the books have been collected as donations and some are not in great condition – we would love to continue growing this fabulous resource.

Our school staff also worked together over the holidays to deep clean and repair the kitchen facilities. Our school cooks work tirelessly every day to provide breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack to our students and as you can imagine the kitchen takes quite a pounding! It was great to have this opportunity to smarten things up ready for the new term.

Thank you for reading this update and for your continued support, which makes our work possible.