Empowering Young Brazilians - Art and Mobilization

Dear Friends and Supporters

Success story – coming back home!!

One of Viva a Vida’s principles is to apply your amazing donations to train young people and provide the community with new experiences, in terms of both qualifications, and social and political development. All of this is undertaken from the perspective of empowerment and the pursuit of autonomy. Over the years, we have developed important projects with our Viva Juntos group of young people, training them in different areas of art and social management. And little by little, at various times, some of them have joined our team.

Now in 2023, with your help, we have started the year reinforcing this approach and today, three of our young participants, former project beneficiaries, have joined the team and are being paid for their work!

Lucas, who is 22 years old, has joined our team as Assistant to the Coordinator. For five years, Lucas was a member of our V2 Theater Group; when he began taking theater classes he was feeling extremely vulnerable because of his sexuality. He had been involved in gay relationships but was experiencing a lot of internal conflict and problems with his family, who practice a religion that does not ‘accept’ homosexuality. These conflicts and excessive suppression meant that he was very shy and ultimately led to depression; at one point he was cutting himself to deal with his mental anguish. Through the theater, he began to feel much more liberated and to develop his potential. Today, he is a member of the team, occupying a very important position advising the General Coordinator in administrative activities and transforming, day by day, into an empowered and autonomous young man, passing on his learning to his peers as a knowledge multiplier. His target for this year is return to education and study administration at university. He has gained the respect of his mother, who is also now a volunteer at Viva a Vida!

“I was very depressed again, at home and with no prospects, which was when I asked Evelin if she knew of anywhere that was hiring people, and I was so surprised when she said, yes, Viva a Vida was. I cried! Talking to my mum that day, I said I was starting to live again.”

Ana Clara is 23 years old, a psychology student and has been hired as an Assistant for our Afroteca library. Ana Clara was also a member of the theatre group, she had moved to Bahia from another state and was having a lot of difficulties adapting, until she joined Viva a Vida and started learning the art of theater. Although she was shy, she was very dedicated and acted in significant roles. She started studying psychology and, although she has overcome a great deal, she still suffers from shyness and problems with her self-image. For Ana Clara, returning to Viva a Vida has provided her with a new opportunity to carry on conquering her frailties.

“I am so honored by this invitation to work at Viva a Vida. The NGO is ‘saving’ my life again.”

Thiago is 22 years old and a youth cultural mobilizer; today he is known as the Revolution Poet. Some of you may have heard of Thiago, he has a long history of partnership and love with Viva a Vida, and you can follow his story in many of our reports and publications. Thiago found out about our work through our Human Rights and Racism workshops and then became a member of the Viva Juntos project, since when he has reached incredible heights. Having got mixed up in a drug-trafficking gang, he came to Viva a Vida feeling very bitter, with family problems and few prospects. Through literature, Thiago discovered poetry and so far he has written five books. He has become a role model for other young people in the State of Bahia. This year, as a member of the Viva a Vida team, he will be responsible for running Arts Events aimed at engaging young people and training them in how to mobilize political support.

“I’m so pleased to represent Viva a Vida, it changed my life. Now I have to do the same for other people.”

Afroteca Muvuca

Viva a Vida has received funding through the Projects that Transform Lives grant of Braskem, a private company, to set up the first physical Afroteca Muvuca library in Bahia. This is aimed at working with literature and identity with 90 children from the Cordoaria Quilombo in Vila de Abrantes, pupils at four local elementary schools. The Afroteca Muvuca will be located in a container equipped to receive 20 children per day, three times a week, with monthly storytelling activities open to all the community. It will contain 150 books on black, indigenous and quilombola themes, which will be used in classes applying an educational plan constructed by educators specializing in Afro-centered Education.

New office

In order to run a project of this size, we have decided to open a new office in the Cordoaria Quilombo and establish Viva a Vida there as a mechanism to support the community. Working with traditional peoples strengthens our mission and our strategy, whose main aim is to combat racism.

This is also part of Viva a Vida’s institutional strengthening strategy, which, over the coming years, will be focused on creating strong links with public and private bodies in order to become a center of reference for work with Human Rights in the State of Bahia, specifically with traditional peoples and black youth.

First meeting about Education for Ethnic-Race Relations

To add more value and new social technologies to our project, on 25 February we held our First Meeting about Education for Ethnic-Race Relations, mediated by educational specialists and Viva a Vida consultants Mariana Barreto and Vanessa Lemos and held in the building of the Cordoaria Residents Association. The meeting was attended by the Viva a Vida team and board members, community leaders, a representative from the Department of Racial Equality, and representatives from other quilombos and funders.

We discussed strategies about how to develop and apply the ethnic-racial approach within formal education arenas, specifically focusing on quilombola children. The mediators discussed the history of education and racism in Brazil and encouraged participants to consider their own identity and self-image, relating this to their personal experiences of racism and other rights violations. Their empowering and sensitive approach led to a rich debate about the real impacts of racism and other violations, and how we will combat these using a Afro-centered approach in the Afroteca Muvuca.

Without your support, none of this enriching work would have been possible, so please accept our thanks and our huge appreciation of your generous donations!

Dear Friends and Supporters

Viva Democracy!

Thanks to your generous support, over recent months we have been able to run the following peer-to-peer empowerment activities with adolescents and young people from the state of Bahia. This work has been dedicated to the fight for democracy and the promotion of Human Rights for all:

• Training young people in how and why democracy works
• Participating in neighborhood marches to promote democracy
• Community mobilization, focused on young people
• Public recitals of political poetry
• T-shirt spray painting

One of Viva a Vida’s founding principles is non-partisan political involvement, maintaining neutrality and ensuring that our young participants have free access to our work and a voice in the fight for their rights.

In line with this principle, we have fought, and continue to fight, for civil and political rights, through activities such as our Vila Jovem group, in which adolescents and young people in the community were trained in how to exercise political oversight and actively participate in the drafting and decision-making of social and public policies concerning their rights. In the last five years, our Viva Juntas Project has trained more than 1,000 young people, promoting Human Rights and combatting Racism and Urban Violence, using an extensive curriculum centered on youth policy.

These activities are always aimed at giving the community the opportunity to diagnose, debate and propose policies in line with their needs. We believe that this is the only ethical way to transform the reality of communities in extreme vulnerability, such as the one we work with.

This year Brazil has been through a political process that culminated in an election with two potential candidates: one who represents democracy and another who asserts a position of racism, homophobia, classism, corruption, violence against women, the promotion of armed militia and State violence, and similar.

Within this context, we have used urban arts – poetry, graffiti, spray painting – to dialogue with young people at Bahia’s busied public transport hub, Lapa bus and metro station, using art to connect and debate. These activities were carried out in partnership with the Poetic Committee Against a Coup (a local group of poets, artists and musicians).

Our young artists used their talents to discuss the importance of democracy and rights for young people. Thiago performed his inspiring, political slam poetry, our graffiti artists Jessé, Miquéias and Romário, spray painted T-shirts, while others sang, gave out leaflets and talked to young people as they passed through the station.

Viva a Vida’s President Juracy, Coordinator Évelin and Consultant Cressida also participated in these democratic debates, to guarantee that the Brazilian Constitution is respected and democracy is maintained. In all, we estimate that, with the support of your donations, we reached approximately 1,000 young people in our debates about fight for democracy.

“Thank you! It’s so important to have active young people here, who know what they’re talking about”, said Danilo, one of the Committee’s leaders on hearing Thiago’s poetry performance.

“What a great experience! It’s so good to be able to contribute to democracy in my country,” said Jessé, who was engaged in T-shirt spray painting.

“Next year I’m going to going the youth group in Camaçari and do more to change things. I decided this after being involved in these activities.” said Romário, who was also engaged in T-shirt spray painting and helped to organize the group.

Another piece of good news, is that, through your generosity, we have almost reached our GlobalGiving financial target. But the fight goes on! We are therefore going to increase this target, in the hope that we can continue to count on your support to empower more adolescents and young people to become healthy and productive global citizens.

Huge thanks to you from all of the Viva a Vida team, young artists, leaders and supporters of democracy!

Dear Friend and Supporter

Today we’re going to update you on the amazing story of Thiago, our Revolutionary Poet, so you can see how your generous donations really do transform and save lives!

Spreading poetry, art and transformation

Thiago became a Viva a Vida beneficiary through the workshops we run on Human Rights, Racism and Violence at the State College of Vila de Abrantes, very close to our offices.  In the first workshop, our Youth Educator, Marcos Paulo, talked about the importance of having dreams.

Thi, as we affectionately call him, didn’t want to participate in the workshop and questioned Marcos Paulo about his choice of theme. He left the classroom! Disturbed by this, Marcos approached him in the school yard for an informal chat.

That was when Thiago said: “I don’t know what dreaming is. My life has never allowed me to dream. I don’t have any prospects, I come to school because I have to, I live with my mother because there’s nothing else I can do, I don’t see any point in your classes or anybody else’s. Can you see these marks (pointing to scars on his body), these are bullet wounds, that’s my story. Do you really think I’m going to start thinking about dreams?”

This difficult dialogue stayed with Marcos, who came into Viva a Vida’s offices and told us about it, considering a thousand ways he could reach out and work with Thiago.  Marcos approached Thiago tirelessly, invited him to workshops, suggested friendships, kept on talking to him.

This bond enabled Thiago to find out about our work, to become involved and, little by little, he fell under our spell!

Over these five years, Thiago has participated in training, become a young assistant and volunteer and a great artist.

Taking photography, poetry and literature workshops, Thiago has discovered that he can write about his experiences, touching and transforming the lives of other people, particularly the lives of other young people.

And Thiago learnt how to dream!

He began to write and recite poetry, has invested in a music career, has started studying again and participates in some of the most important artist collectives in the city.

He lives alone and supports himself through his art.  Reciting poetry on buses and in bars. The story of his involvement in the violent drug trade has been replaced by work to transform lives through his own life experience!

Finally, but this isn’t the end, now aged 20, in June, Thiago launched his first book of poems, called Akanni – Fruitful Encounter, containing his poetry of protest and the anti-racist struggle.

The book launch took place in the Cordoaria Quilombo and Thiago gave a copy to every one of the 23 women from the Flour House, participants in Viva a Vida’s Beijuzeuras in Resistance Project. The book contains seven of Thiago’s very powerful and impactful poems, focused on the social reality of most black men and women from Brazil’s city peripheries:

War on drugs, or war on black lives?

War on drugs, or war on black lives?

I see death in the ghetto and I say nothing

In the news we see only Ukraine at war

In real life I see a black mother abandoned

In real life I see my sister Maria abandoned

So many weapons in the world

And love has become small…

The meaning of life

Is everyone united.

Social attitudes tell people

That they are unequal

But no one is unequal

They are brothers of capital

Of the state, of the country.

They carve up the world

and tell you they are civilized.

Recently, Thiago presented his work to the Global Fund for Children’s (GFC) CEO Meeting, attended by GFC senior management and representatives of grassroots institutions from around the world, to discuss management, governance, social project planning and social technologies.  During the meeting, Thiago talked about his life experiences, how he came to know Viva a Vida and how art has transformed his life.  Here are some of the responses to his presentation from colleagues in Romania, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Guatemala and Washington:

“Great story Tiago and I love the fact that your transformation is so visible and you are also touching lives.”

“Powerful life story Tiago... we are super proud of the impact you are creating.”

“Very inspiring!!!!!”

“Maybe we cannot change the world, but just to change one life is worth it.”

“Incredible journey Tiago, thank you for sharing with us!”

“If more politicians were artists, the world would be a better place!”

“I couldn’t miss this bro. What a powerful platform.”

The group talked about translating Thiago’s poetry into other languages to use in their youth projects, and one of the participants said he had never understood the meaning of poetry but, through Thiago’s words and emotion, he has now begun to feel and understand it.

Viva dreams, Viva art, Viva Thiago, Viva a Vida!!!

Find out a more about this story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I29qilrAxxs – a short film about Thiago’s life (with English subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5VAoDtKTYw - Thiago presenting Viva a Vida’s documentary about Drug Policy (in Portuguese)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eWCKDKE1J0- Thiago’s first poetry performance on stage (in Portuguese)

“Beijuzeuras in resistance: getting back to work!”

On 5 June, after six months of hard work, and thanks to all your donations and words of support, the “Beijuzeuras in resistance: getting back to work!” project, supporting the beijuzeira pancake makers of the Cordoaria Quilombo in Vila de Abrantes, came to an end.  Your gifts have helped this project leave a legacy of knowledge aimed at combatting prejudice, promoting entrepreneurialism and overcoming difficulties.

There were 63 project beneficiaries 23 women, 20 young people and 20 children.  The closing activity at the Cordoaria Flour House was attended by all the beijuzeira women and was also the occasion for Thiago, our Revolutionary Poet, to launch his book of poems Akanni – Fruitful Encounter.

The project was set up to minimize the impacts the COVID-19 pandemic had on the community, and is a Viva a Vida initiative, with funding from the state government, through the Department for the Promotion of Racial Equality (Sepromi), in partnership with the Beijuzeiras women’s group in the Cordoaria Quilombo.

The activities were run along three action lines: Women, with a view to promoting the work of the beijuzeiras and strengthening entrepreneurship; Young people, who participated in racism and graffiti workshops as a way to generate income; Children, who participated in story-telling workshops based on the works of black authors.

All the material purchased for the project was intended to strengthen local commerce and generate income for other women, such as the aprons produced by the seamstresses of the Estiva de Buris de Abrantes Association.

Links:

• Short film about Thiago's journey

Dear Friends and Supporters

VIVA THE QUILOMBO!!!!

Since our last report, with all our reverence for ancestry and with all your help, Viva a Vida has been working in the Cordoaria Quilombo. The community, which has resisted for over 260 years, contains 300 families and around 1,200 inhabitants.

The relationship between Viva a Vida and the quilombo started slowly, through our response to the terrible effects COVID-19 has had on the community. With your donations and with support from GlobalGiving’s emergency fund, we’ve helped to meet the needs of a good part of the community, with food, hygiene kits, activities and respect. 

Today, we can say that we are really connected to the quilombo, structuring our work towards more activities and projects to improve lives. At the end of last year, we received funding from the Bahia State Government, through its Department for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPROMI) to carry out an intervention there.

We are providing training and emergency aid activities for 23 women who are members of the Cordoaria flour house. The training focuses on black entrepreneurship, given that the women live from the products, principally beiju pancakes, they make from manioc flour and all this production had to stop during the pandemic. Viva a Vida’s training was aimed at qualifying the women as black entrepreneurs as they started to get back to work, hence the name of the project “Beijuzeuras in resistance: getting back to work!” Other activities include a course on racism and rights in which they have been able to reflect on the importance of maintaining their traditions in order to strengthen their community group.

Looking at the family as a whole, we have been amazed by the talent of the young people in the community who have learned to make graffiti T-shirts and participated in conversation circles about violence (an important topic in a community which already contains individuals and groups involved in drug trafficking and violence). And with the children, we’ve had unique encounters, helping them reclaim their quilombola identity by telling stories that reflect their Afro-Brazilian history, and setting up an important partnership with the local school.

Other sustainability activities for the women beijuzeuras include restructuring their social media platforms, making uniforms, standardizing their audio-visual material, and financial support for the purchase of materials and kits with supplies and utensils. With your support, we have been able to ensure that the most important thing happens: QUILOMBOLA WOMEN ARE FINANCIALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND ABLE TO LIVE WITH DIGNITY!

Here are some of the things people have said about the project:

“My dear, we will never forget the affection you at Viva a Vida have for us. Not just because of the benefits, but for everything we're learning here,” Maria, Beijuzeira.

“Quilombo children really need this. Other people coming to talk to them about what we try to say every day... you are beautiful, beautiful black princesses” Alexandra, head of the local quilombo elementary school.

“I'm very excited about everything I see here. As a black woman, I know the importance of seeing other black women going through these formative experiences” Liliane, SEPROMI funding inspector.

Other Activities:

a)      Oxiteno Mentoring:

Some of Viva a Vida’s young people are completing the Letters and Careers project. At this stage, they are accompanied by volunteer mentors from Oxiteno, directing their life plans and focusing on developing strategies to enter the world of work.

“I never imagined I needed to have a professional life plan, but now I know how to put down different strategies on paper and choose the path to follow. I no longer feel frustrated or lost” Miqueias, young male participant.

“It's been wonderful to have a mentor, he was a great match, I'm learning so much” Valéria, young female participant. 

b)      Vocação:

We’re happy to tell you that we’ve just finalized a great partnership with the Vocação Institution, based in São Paulo, which provides unique and essential work supporting young people in their professional development and training. They focus on opening up opportunities for marginalized young people from the city peripheries, to help them access quality education and work. Together we’re going to train 500 students from the public school system in ways to enter the job market, with a particular focus on ‘soft skills’, to enhance interpersonal communication and self-esteem.

c)      Funder Visit - Global Fund For Children (GFC):

On April 02, Kimberly and Nayara, GFC representatives, visited Viva a Vida to find out about our work on the “Beijuzeuras in resistance: getting back to work!” project in the Cordoaria Quilombo.   During the visit, the quilombola children had great fun listening to Maju, our fantastic storyteller, telling them stories that reflect their Afro-Brazilian and quilombola history. The children absolutely loved it! To end the visit with a smile, representatives of the Cordoaria Quilombo presented the visitors, and Cressida (Viva a Vida International Consultant and former Coordinator), with souvenirs bags of delicious products made in the quilombo.

Dear Friends and Kind Supporters,

We have overcome and are still learning!

We’ve told you before how we’ve had to reorganize our activities to meet the new demands arising from the pandemic. With your amazing and generous support, we’ve managed to adapt all our activities and been able to go with the flow. Our main aim has always been to equip our beneficiaries, especially young people, with the tools to deal with the rights violations they experience, because they are poor, mostly Afro-Brazilians, living in the city periphery, in a region that suffers extreme violence and a lack of access to public services. These tools will strengthen them in their fight for a better community and a better life.

In recognition of the work you have supported, we are pleased to announce that Viva a Vida’s workshops have entered the state government’s educational plan as a Complementary Curriculum Activity. This means that they have been formally recognized as activities that complement the high school curriculum, with content designed and applied by our team now included as a regular high school subject.

With this behind us and with your help, we’ve been able to maintain our core activity providing workshops in the Vila de Abrantes State College, our long-standing partner. Following the education guidelines of the Bahia State Education Department and WHO health recommendations, this year we reformulated our workshops to provide them online. Through the school's digital channels, in 2021, around 1,200 students, aged between 15 and 18 years, participated in our remote learning activities.

These included 26 workshops about Human Rights, Community Action, Race Relations, Racism, the Concepts of Violence, Drug Policy, the Incarceration of Black Youth, Penal Populism and Poetry Writing. All these classes have been recorded on the Vila de Abrantes State College YouTube channel and can be accessed at any time (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZIEc5t5CuyBBfN_aDgajcA).

The results of our evaluations were surprising and very pleasing - 100% of the students who responded to our assessment confirmed that, following the workshops, they understand more about Human Rights, racism and violence; 97% feel better prepared to confront racism and other rights violations; and 90% we able to identify legal instruments and other means to report them.

One result of the workshops were dozens of political poems and expressions, some of which are quoted below, while others will soon be available on our Instagram account @vivaavidaorg. At the end of the course, 97% of the students understood that poetry and literature can help them to understand other themes. It’s worth noting that the students’ texts touch on the content learnt over this period and that they express the construction of new values, understanding each student’s role in combatting racism and other rights violations.

Life Stories by Ingrid 

“Some with a lot

Others with a little

The bullet sings

The police climb the hill

Dona Maria cries

Calling for help

Another black dead body

Lying at her door.”

“Fear of change. But what would there be without it? Can you light a fire without burning firewood? Can you cook without transforming food? Can a vital process occur without something being altered? Can’t you see? It’s the same with you – change is vital for nature”. Jairle 

"I wake up with problems, a target on my chest, I’m not perfect, I only want a day with full respect, with every right to live another day, I know I’m black, but I want the right to live another day.”  Ingrid

"Opening a book is like opening a door, it has an entrance and an exit, when you go in, there’s a story, when you leave too, thinking with my mind, I will go far, to Berlin or Belem, I will go out to play with verses too” Daniel

Summary of the projects you have supported:

a) Human Rights, Racism and Violence Workshops: as mentioned above, approximately 1,200 students participated in these workshops. Here’s what some of the students had to say:

“In this week’s classes I learnt that there are still many people who devalue black people and worship white ones. That there are still those who hurt the people I love”.

“I learnt that without Human Rights, the world would be worse than it is, and we need to change. To change our thinking and remove ignorance, because it only slows us down and that’s annoying as hell.” 

b) SOS Mulheres Beijuzeiras: Continuing our activities supporting traditional communities, we have started this project in the Cordoaria Quilombo, serving 23 families of the Beijuzeira women, who make traditional beiju pancakes, 20 young people and 20 children, with financial support, income generating graffiti workshops for teenagers, black entrepreneurship workshops for women and specialist storytelling for the children, aimed at reclaiming the ancestral history of this Afro-Brazilian community.

“The NGO has never forgotten us. We always analyze in advance which group is really interested in our people, first we checked you out and then we realized that you have a real interest in taking care of our people” Jace the Beijuzeiras President.

c) Letters and Careers: Rede Atados invited us to participate in a pilot project with the Oxiteno company, which has offices in several of Brazil’s capitals and a unit in Camaçari. The project promotes an exchange of letters between volunteers and young people entering the labor market, to develop and encourage reading and writing. Five young people from Viva a Vida represented Bahia in this project, which enabled them to reclaim the habit of writing letters and to exchange experiences of the job market.

“It was very important for me to participate in the project, because I love the act of exchange, and exchanging with someone from another area was extremely enriching! I could say that the best feeling was writing the letter, something I wasn’t used to, and finally adding a face to my letter and being able to exchange it with a person who I identified with so much!” Gabriel, 22 years old, photographer.

"For me, the best feeling in the project was being able to write a letter after a long time, not to mention writing to someone I didn't know. Meeting Bruna was wonderful, waiting for her letter, I was anxious to find out who she was, it was really good to share my aims and goals with her, and to find out about hers too. Meeting new people is always good, right, seeing the world from another perspective and the letter exchange was definitely the best part, thank you to all those involved, I'm super happy to have participated and contributed to this wonderful project”. Thiago, 20 years old, poet and musician.

Emergency Activities

a) Christmas Baskets: Continuing our activities to support the Cordoaria Quilombola community, this year we donated 300 staple food baskets to families through a partnership with the BEES platform, an app that works with beverage suppliers. Two of our young participants worked with the team, helping to distribute the aid.

“God bless you girl, my grandchildren will be so happy to see so much sausage”, said one of the elderly quilombola women, who is also a Beijuzeira pancake maker.

When we work in emergency activities, we are also mindful of the importance of the long-term and strategic impact of our work. So we were really pleased to see the result this activity had on both Viva a Vida’s board and its corporate partners. Juracy, our President, and Márcia, a member of the Trustee Board, both volunteered to help distribute emergency aid. Márcia is the mother of one of Viva a Vida’s young leaders and a long-standing member of the community, but even she was surprised at the worsening poverty caused by the pandemic: “The house I’ve just been to, there was an old woman there who had nothing to eat, she went crazy when she saw the sausages, I’m going to buy her some biscuits and take them round,” she said.

And at the end of the project Pedro, the head of the BEES project, talked about how Viva a Vida had changed his view of the importance of making the effort to provide equal treatment to excluded and marginalized people: “these might be small things to some people but they really make a difference to others, like you said. This really changed my perspective, thank you for teaching me!”

Governance and Grant Funding:

a) Global Fund For Children (GFC) Executive Coordinators Group: Viva a Vida’s Coordinator Évelin Salles and international Consultant, Cressida Evans, continue to participate in this group, set up by GFC for project coordinators from around the world. Meetings take place once a month and are aimed at strengthening organizations. They provide an opportunity to discuss various issues with partners including institutional demands, assessment tools and the new pandemic circumstances. The group has provided Viva a Vida with an opportunity to think about new methods, in addition to playing a fundamental role in the “spirit” of staying in the fight to keep the institution's mission alive.

b) Grants: During this period we were awarded two very important public grants for the local community. The first came from the Ecumenical Coordination of Service (Coordenadoria Ecumênica de Serviço: CESE), through which Viva a Vida has supported more than 60 people, with political training workshops, income generation, the restoration of Afro-Brazilian history and financial support. The second project is supported by the Department for the Promotion of Equality of the State of Bahia (Secretaria de Promoção da Igualdade do Estado da Bahia: SEPROMI) and will be implemented in 2022. The project will serve the families of the Beijuzeiras in the Quilombo’s Flour House with a wide-ranging project, including financial support and workshops.