Sponsor's update from Juiz de Fora, Brazil

Child sponsorship update from the SOS Children's Village Juiz de Fora, Brazil from Winter 2008.

Year’s end is coming and this one is very important for our big family. First, marry of a young lady in our community, 19-year-old Leci gets married on November 01 at the Baptist Church, ceremony that has been prepared with love and dedication by her SOS mother Cidinha, siblings, and friends.

Now children are getting ready to final exams at school and everybody are looking forward to the end of the year events: Friend’s Day, summer school vacation, Santa Claus, New Year’s Party and travels at the beginning of the next year.
Technical team has been done a good work with the annual final reports, annual assessments, and planning for the next actions. We are really glad to see the work done during 2008 by both programmes’ teams after the integration of programmes: Family-Based Care and Community and Family Strengthening.

At the beginning of this term, July winter school vacation, children from day-care had activities focused on ludic themes and games. Same happened in the Family-Based Care, children took part in a vacation camp, offered by a partner country club placed nearby here. There children could enjoy recreational, leisure, and sportive activities and had their lunch in the restaurant there, which let children feeling very important for eating in a restaurant.

In August, Community and Family Strengthening Programme started a survey to implement new community centres nuclei, aiming to enlarge its prevention and protection net, being a novel iniciative in our town. In Santa Luzia district nucleus, youths were invited to a workshop on citizenship. In our region, team works hard in the diagnostic research on women’s health, since this “character” is the main column in almost all our beneficiaries’ families.

Also this year we celebrated 18 years of ECA - Children’s and Adolescents’ Act, our legal reference on this issue. Some teenagers representing the village attended to the ceremony, which started with a breakfast together with members of the town’s assistance net and the Judge of the Children’s Court. On the same day, Youth Programme office was opened and had the visit of the honorable District Attorney, Judge and his team from Barbacena (a nearby city) who came to see our work and sheltering proposal, which keeps natural siblings together. Our youths felt free to talk with them on many subjects and after that we had cake, soda, and candies to celebrate ECA. Day was closed with a talking circle on Federal Law.

Children growing up at Juiz de Fora, Brazil

16-year-old Gesiane represented our youths in a meeting held in SOS Children’s Village Goioerê, Paraná State, which had as action principles: Look, Think over, and Do it. On this same perspective, a group of 13 teenagers took part in another meeting promoted by a partner NGO held in Rio de Janeiro, with the theme “Metamorphosing” which make them think about need of transform reality, focused on this NGOs principles: Shelter, Talk, Feel, Do it.

In September, our village welcomed spring with a party for the whole community. All co-workers worked hard to do the activities, which aimed to raise funds. During the party, there were lots of delicious pies and snacks donated by our partners and friends. Later in the afternoon children and co-workers did a beautiful parade all dressed up like colourful flowers and greens.

In the Family-based Care Programme, we housed some groups of siblings, our SOS mothers welcomed 18 children during this year. In addition, we supported the return to the birth family of some children, and again our SOS mothers were their helping birth families to plan this new phase of their lives, preparing children to come back to their natural families. Also we aid 8 children during their process to go to foster families, and we have had success on keeping siblings together during these processes.

Our youths continue on searching for an opportunity to get into the job market through professionalisation courses, which this year resulted in placement of some youths as apprentices, like Michele, Tatiana, Adrinana, Naiara, Eric, J. Tadeu, and Alecson, that work in public agencies, municipal secretariat, day-care, supermarkets, and companies. Turning up to legal age and reaching their autonomy, Vagner, Rafaela, Bruna, and Leci have left the village, but all of them can count on us and we will support and follow them in many ways.

Dear sponsors, in behalf of all children, teenagers, and co-workers we say farewell with the same feeling of those youths who say good-bay to SOS Village, having the sure that we will always can count on you who worries about our children and our work. We wish you and your family our sincere vows of happiness and prosperity.

Sincerely,

Alexandre Cruz de Oliveira, Village Director; Deisiana Campos Pereira, Social Centre Director; Flávia Lopes Longo Machado, Social Worker and Márcia Bertoletti, Sponsorship Department