Prevent Youth Involvement in Drug Trafficking

End of the year it is time to make a balance.  Ours is positive. Why do we think it was positive?

•  we have kept 50 children/adolescents in our programs;
•  the project has engaged the mothers/ women of the community in a income generation project;
• we have succeeded to keep our partnerships with Jingando, the company that sells shoes all over the world and donates one pound for each per of shoes sold.
• our project has had visibility in Rio as we offer an alternative to the risk of children engaging in drug traffic.
• the community of the favela feels very proud and shows ownership towards the project. 
• we have  volunteers that offer their talents and services to the children.  You will be able to see in this video a music class where the children sing a song that was composed by the group themselves. It is possible to see their joy and engagement.   There are volunteers that do artcrafts, others do theater. In other words the project offers education through recreation which is engaging for children.
• the great thing also was that in 2010, we could renovate the house that hosts the project.  It was painted, new furniture was acquired. Children painted the walls with drawings, the atmosphere invites to stay there.

The highlight of the year was the income generating project organized by women.  One of our main challenges is always to keep the basic infrastructure that allows us to maintain the house that hosts the project as well as the team of educators and animators that feed the educative process.

Our source of income are individual donations that are not constant therefore not reliable. There are months where it is possible to cover the total amount needed to maintain the 50 children at the center and we have even an excedent. There are months in which the money is not sufficient. In generally we have been able to cover all expenses since our inception in 2006.

This year of 2010, we envisioned new sources of income to sustain the house and the initiative with the children. This was done through supporting a group of women, some of them mothers of the children that are our beneficiaries. The idea was  to create an income generation project based on the confection of articrafts made of recycled material. The project called Mulheres de Santa  lasted the whole year and is occupying part of the house with hand made products and a second hand store where specially people from the community come to buy.  So far this income generating  project was able to provide 10% of the basic expenses of the house, as the women themselves also need to have revenue of their work.  We envision that this can grow in 2011. The goal is to make the activities that support children at the center increasingly sustainable. This may take some years  years, but this was the beginning.

As we are in Brazil it is not easy for us to exactly know what would you be willing to know about our project, so it would be wonderful if you check regularly our blog which is also done in English and let us know what else do you want to know about our project? 

Links:

• website Julio Otoni project - it is updated regularly.
• Julio Otoni Income Generating Proj. by Women to support children
• Children sing a song composed during a class at Julio Otoni cent