Football & music
According to the UN, there are around 25 million street children in Latin America. Out of these, they predict that 7 million lives in Brazill. In many cases, it is poverty that forces the children out to the street. They usually come from broken families with drug abuse, physical abuse, and poverty. Ever since Child Mercy Sweden was founded in 1980, street children have been a matter of our hearts.
Life in the slums is hard and brutal. Crime is the rule rather than the exception and most families are affected by that in some way. In the big cities, tens of thousands of people live in large slums, so-called favelas. They are controlled by gangs and characterized by crime, unemployment, poverty, housing shortages and almost non-existent sanitation. Many children in the project can tell about siblings or parents who are in prison because of crime and many lack hope for the future. Our employees testify that many of the children have a hard facade when they arrive, but with time they soften. Our efforts are aimed at children and young people from the slums and at children who live in the risk zone of becoming street children. The efforts are long-term and are aimed at both girls and boys. The goal is to keep children off the streets and prevent them from being drawn into crime, drugs, prostitution and to increase protection for children by strengthening families.
The project we support is located in the city of Salvador and is divided into two orientations - football and music. Half the day the children go to their chosen activity and the other part of the day they go to the municipal school. We strive to give vulnerable children hope and faith in the future. Through the football- and music school, many children have been given new hope over the years and we continue the work of giving even more children changed lives and hope for a better tomorrow.
Safer life - away from the slums
In the football project, they work on developing basic skills in football such as technique, shooting practice, fitness, interaction and fair play. The children are divided into different groups and each group is playing three times a week. With regularity, the children also get the opportunity to attend different football cups in order to measure their skills with other teams. This is a much appreciated feature. Another activity that is important and recurring is gatherings with family and relatives. Regular meetings are held between parents, children and work teams. The team includes the physical education teacher alternatively the music teacher, psychologist, volunteer worker and other key persons depending on the needs and situation of the children and families.
The team regularly visits the home of the children, in order to map and evaluate the needs and also potentional dangers that could exist. Often the mothers are single and bear the entire responsibility of providing and doing this in a slum area is draining and difficult. Many of the children who come to the sports project and the music project are not registered, which means that they do not have access to healthcare and school. Therefore, we encourage relatives to register their children so that they can go to school. Sometimes our employees have to come along when the parents feel unsure about attending meetings with the authorities.
Over the years, the soccer- and music project has been a bright spot and a safe place for many children who live in Salvador's large slums.
The goal of the activities is to create opportunities for the children to start school or to be able to continue school if they dropped out. All children and young people who come to the project must go to regular school to be able to join the football school or the music school. School and education therefore come first. Everyone needs basic knowledge to be able to develop in a positive direction and break their social exclusion. The center also offers help with homework, training in English and computer skills, etc. This is something that the children cannot get help with within the environment they come from. So the center is, in order to give the children support in schooling, of great importance.
The most important goal in the projects is to keep children off the street. Today there are 127 children enrolled in the music school and 88 in the soccer school and they are between six and fourteen years old. The interventions are largely preventive in the sense that the activities should help keep the children away from street life, crime and drugs. But if the children are already involved in crime and drug abuse, the interventions are aimed at treating and helping the children to get out of this.
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