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Brazil
- Partner country since:
- 1994
- Number of individual foster parentings dd July 2007:
- 216
- Local responsibles:
- Belo Horizonte: Wim Stijnen
- Contagem: Galvao Antonio
- Sao Paulo: Ditte Kuiper-Stokman
- Januaria: Antonio Dewulf
CUNINA foster children
According to some, Brazil isn’t a developing country. Indeed, on the world market, Brazil is 7th when the economy is concerned. The Brazilian wealth is not equally divided though. The gap between rich and poor is devastating.
About 10 million Brazilians don’t have a permanent address. More than half of the Brazilians suffer from hunger, every year more than 200.000 children die of undernourishment. The darker the colour of your skin, the less opportunities you get. Approximately 75% of the coloured population is illiterate.
In the surrounding of the cities with over a million inhabitants Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, the favelas or slums are growing. In huts made of street rubbish, 30% of the Brazilian population tries to survive the degrading circumstances. The majority of them were farmers on the countryside once but were expropriated by the large landowners. They moved to the big cities looking for a job. In the favelas, special militias legally hunt street children. The quickest and most efficient way to rid the metropolises of these “thieves and drug addicts” is simply by killing them.
Imagine being born in one of those favelas... Linked to the projects CUNINA supports in Brazil, there are individual foster parentings to get and keep these (former) street children going to school. Because to them, a proper education is the only way out of an otherwise dead-end existence.
Omwille van het gebrek aan interesse en medewerking van de Braziliaanse regering, is ontwikkelingswerk in Brazilië niet voor de hand liggend. Maar deze kinderen aan hun lot overlaten is voor CUNINA gewoon geen optie.
