Stories from Vila Dias

Maybe from the distance, you see the slum as a place full of dangers, bad people, violence, ugly and badly finished houses, etc.

I know what I see!
Amazing people with their life stories, challenges and dreams. Children full of potential and energy. Strong women who educate their children with challenges and difficulties.

Today I had the privilege of meeting another story. 

Walking up the hill to come home, I met Silvia (I'll call her like that).
28 years old, charwoman, 6 children, no husband, boyfriend in jail awaiting trial, happy and communicative. Silvia and I talked as we walked up the hill.
She said that eleven days before, she had given birth to a girl. At first she could not remember the name of the youngest daughter. After some effort, Sylvia remembered the name and told us that her father had chosen the beautiful girl name. Due to complications in childbirth, the baby girl was still hospitalized and Silvia would clean the house of a family and after that visit her baby in the hospital. 

According to her: "Leave her there in the hospital, poor girl, it is better not to see how terrible this world is..."

Silvia had a cesarean and eleven days later, she was walking up the hill to work. When I talked about resting after the cesarean section, she gave a good ironic laugh "If I rest, my kids do not eat ..." 

We kept talking, which seemed more like an interview because I had a lot of questions to ask. Silvia answered each of my questions with enthusiasm, it's nice to be heard even by a stranger.
So, I heard about her struggle, her life, the difficulty of not being able to keep all children with her, the sadness to deliver "some" children to the care of others and the satisfaction of working to sustain her home.

There are many Silvias in poor communities all around. Each Silvia  with her own history, struggles and difficulties. 

The biggest challenge is to show these women that there is a better life. The challenge is to help them to break the cycle of poverty that holds women like Silvia in a routine of conformism and hopelessness.

There is hope for Silvia and her 6 children.
There is hope for this girl born eleven days ago.

What we are doing

Every monday we have our Creative Workshop in the Vila Dias. Every morning we receive 25 children, 05-14 years old, divided into two groups to participate in our workshops.

Our goal is the development of creativity and the new manual skills, but we also enjoyed the time to teach values ​​like discipline, respect, care for the neighbor, etc.

Many times, we have to teach for the small kids simple things like how to use the scissors, keep their sitting, use the magic words like thanks and please.
We also spent time to talk with them about the problems they face at home, at school, dilemmas of life in the community as fights between neighbors, lack of leisure facilities and even more serious issues like sexuality, profession, future, etc..

Click Here to be part of it!

"Art of Respect" Last weeks and final party!

"With this project they discover new gifst, experience new things. 

They learn to think bigger then they tought they could do"

It was interesting to see how the children started to work in their groups. One group only talked about the background, and further everyone gave their personal expression in the painting. But also in this group you saw a leader. Without words accepted by the rest of the group.

An other group saw the talent of one group member and gave him space to do his work, in some kind of way also part of working together, and for sure it is respecting his talent. Though it was also a challenge for this group because one of the younger boys was sometimes frustrated because he could do nothing. But after a conversation with the whole group, there was a solution. 

An other group decided to divide the wood in four parts, so every groupmember would have its own space to paint. But last week 3 of the groups members dicided to do something together, so they started to painted their parts of the wood blue without knowing what to paint exactly. But the fourth groupmember was still holding on to his own idea of painting some mountains and a sun. And the other three where making words about what he was doing. But he kept on painting, he did not give up! And when the rest of the group saw how nice it was they dicided to follow his plan aswell, and they started with painting more mountains. And they have a beautiful result.

Sometimes it was necessary for kids to be part of an already existing group. It happened often that children did not came for different reasons. But it was nice to see how flexibel the kids could be in these changes.

Not only with making the paintings we saw a lot of fun. But with making the decorations for the party aswell on the fridays. Days before several children already asked if they could be part of this class. We made a lot of decoration with strips of paper. And we also made the invitation for the final party.

FINAL PARTY

Last friday 1st of november we had the final party. A lot of children and family came to enjoy food and drinks and a lot of activities, and to see the official presentation of the artworks of the children. It was a special party and what a proud we saw on their faces.

All the painting were covered for the the special moment of the presentation

We counted 1,2,3... and the painting is official presented to family and friends

Proud girls!

The big boys with their painting.

A lot of love is this painting!

Beautiful! Respect is good, ad i like it!

Mountains and sun! The painting of the group who changed from doing all its own painting.... 

in making one together!

After the presentation of the art, we showed a movie about the past weeks. 

We ate some nice food....

And the children enjoyed different activities...

It was a party with a lot of fun! And a perfect ending of the "Art of Respect" project.

Some reactions of the children about the project and what they learned about respect: 

"It was really fun, and creative, we learned how to make a painting, to work in groups, how important it is to respect other people, to respect older people, that you have to respect others to be respected aswell"

I asked one of the teachers what she thought about the project and if she sees it have an impact on the children, she responded:

"This project was really interesting. Art together with the subject respect is really strong and i like it! The word respect they never used before. But now i see that they use it in their discussions or fights.. they say to eachother... but what about respect.... With this project they also discovered new gifst, experiencede new things. They learned to think bigger then they tought they could do"

Before

After