Lunch for Children in Free NGO Day-Care Center

Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir Ana Paula da Cruz, after loosing a baby, decided that she should change her perception of life and began dedicating her time to the children within her community.

Previously working with events since 1998, Ana Paula often organized children’s parties. She realized that the favorite game of the kids was to simulate and reproduce the violence that was inherent in their day to day lives. This conveyed to her a dangerous acceptance of their realty that should not be.

Worried about changing this vision of the children, in relation to the world they live in, she created in her home a place that initially offered a minimum level of assistance. Since then however, the project has grown into a place of voluntary orientation and daily assistance to many struggling mothers. One of the main intentions of the project is to create a better relationship between parents and children.

Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir initially received very little help from outside sources. They relied mainly upon the help of volunteering neighbors within the community as well as conducting raffles in order to collect money. The other main source of their support came from Ana’s relatives, like her uncle Fernando Rosa, who initial paid for 60% of the food. Currently the project has been continuing now for 6 years in the home where Ana used to live and has 42 children that attend daily. The majority of the children that attend come from extremely difficult situations. Many of them have parents that are involved in and/or addicted to drugs. Some come from broken homes living with single mothers who are unemployed or who often work far away from their homes only returning once or twice a month, while others do not have parents at all.

The children that attend the project do activities such as theater where they learn how to read and write through the plays. All of the children receive three meals per day as well as necessary health care assistance. Families of the children also receive baskets with basic foods such as rice, beans, and pasta. These baskets also contain medications for the kids in situations of disease.

Currently the Project has a great deal of needs. At this time Ana only has one other volunteer (Fernando’s daughter) and coordinating has become very difficult. In 2004 Fernando, who contributed a large portion of their support, tragically passed away and to make matters even more difficult many of those who used to support Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir are no longer helping.

These difficulties have nearly caused a loss of hope in Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir. Their desires are to have this project working like it once did, becoming again a reference to the community where boys and girls can live apart from violence and situations of risk. Regaining the volunteers needed that together have the same idea of changing the destiny of these kids. Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir needs help, so that in the future, the youth in this community can have opportunities and chances that will keep them from a life of crime and violence that so many other children have already fallen victim to due to their exclusion from society.

Voluntários Fazendo Criança Sorrir intends to convey awareness of the poverty and suffering of marginalized women and children due to the indifference from the public powers and the lack of concern or support in the private sector. The project fights for social justice in its attempt to portray women as being ideally important within society and having a significant role. They teach parents and children to change their perspectives of people that live in areas of social exclusion, and to contest and review the preconceptions that are imposed upon families living within poor communities enabling them to perceive their true place in society.

We have a special commitment in the future – to become good words through good actions

If you want to meet our kids, come here!

We are currently serving 43 children, 35 of which are with us full-time and 7 more whose parents have now found work. For the others, while the children in are in the creche the parents can seek work opportunities.

We have, however, instituted new policies where we limit the amount of time that these children can stay if the parents are not employed in order that the parents do not take advantage of our services and to be sure that they are really looking for employment at that time.

We have 25 youth, who are taking reinforcement classes and a hand craft class with recycled materials, three times a week with two women from the community.

We also help 22 families who have children with disabilities or suffer from a chronic disease; with medicine, food, and sometimes transport to the doctor. We acquire these resources through campaigns we hold in different neighborhoods in the region.

Every week we go to two more well off neighborhoods, explain the project and collect food to make the monthly food baskets. Each child has a sponsor who pays for their medicines.

36 of the families receive monthly food baskets and clothes, an organization Rio Voluntário (Rio Vounteers) provides the clothing, and we also have a campaign to receive clothes.

We started working once a week with two women from the community to talk about sex education and birth rate control (one is the mother of a child from the project). The team has started a course in the "health center" to teach these things.