Help Street Youth in Brazil Earn a Living

In February of this year we headed over to Brazil to deliver our third Brazilian Training of Trainers workshop. We had expanded into Duque de Caxias where Luciano, a 'master trainer' who had attended one of our courses elsewhere in Brazil, works for a youth-serving organisation (YSO). Duque de Caxias is the place where almost a third of all street youth in Rio de Janeiro originate, and our project was based in one of the poorest favelas there - Mangeuirinha.

We trained eleven frontline youth workers over two weeks, along with 27 marginalised young people. According to our model, we then left the youth workers to put their training into practice and - with our support - they returned to their local organisations and incorporated our Street Business Toolkit into their existing work with street-connected youth. Using a 'community of practice', in which our partner organisation Associacao Brasileira Terra dos Homens visits each YSO to get updates from and share experience with our trained youth workers, we support and monitor the progress of our trainee youth workers.

The training of street-connected and other marginalised youth is ongoing (and, we hope, will continue indefinitely past the 12-month project period) but, thanks to generous donors like you, it is now fully funded so we will be taking it down from Global Giving.

Close to 100 young people have been or are being trained in our Street Business Toolkit. These youth will then be equipped for life to open and expand their own businesses or secure employment, allowing them to become financially independent and support themselves and their families.

In short, this project has given young people 'without a chance' in life the opportunity to capitalise on their potential and build a secure future for themselves.