PROJECT
UERÊ
Houses are almost stuck to one another. Streets are narrow. There are no trees. Near there, on Guanabara Bay, large gutters flow into the sea. Heat mixes with flies and bad smell. There are 130 thousand people, living in 17 communities, striving against low income, prejudice, precarious houses, not enough schools for children, alcoholism, the police action against drug traffic which is violent sometimes, and the dispute among drug dealer groups for traffic control. We are just a few minutes away from Rio de Janeiro's beautiful beaches: this is Maré Slum, on Brazil Avenue.
Maré, however, does not have only problems. Two little coloured houses, full of children running and playing, show that there are solutions. In these houses the Uerê Project works, created by Ivone Bezerra de Melo, a brazilian social worker. In a Brazilian indian language, "uerê" means "child". There, nearly 200 children receive school complementation, attention and the most important, care.
An idea the size of a seed
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Ivone arrives early in the morning, with her assistant, Luciana. They get off the car and children get around them. The red imported car is the only visible sign of her social class, that is very far from the slum.
Educated in Sorbonne and the wife of a great CEO on a Brazilian enterprise, she came to a very different reality. Ivone was one of the first people to strive, since the early eighties, to alert Brazilian society that it was pushing children to the streets. More than talking, she could be seen working with them on streets and even under viaducts.
In 1992,
she worked with a large group of children under a viaduct. When the City
administration decided to remove her from that place, she got, in exchange,
the donation of a house in one of the communities where many of the children
came from: Maré Slum.
So Project Uerê was born.
Looking into the dragon´s eye
The working day with the children is almost beginning. There will be many activities: classes, lunch, cleaning the hall. Everyone helps in everything. It works, maybe, because the project's concept is to be small and agile. All the workers know how to do everything that is needed, to control expenses and receipts, everybody knows each other's salary, all the people work together on the management.
The room seems small for so many children. K., an african volunteer is already there, waiting for Ivone. Everything is very rustic. On the walls, happy phrases and drawings, incentives. On the other house, a group of teenagers is already working with Carlos, the other teacher.
The happy children's faces don´t show what they go through, day-by-day. The stories are hard to tell. "These children get nothing from the State. Their mothers are drunken or addicted", claims Ivone. Rape is usual. She shows a beautiful and smiling little girl, maybe five years old. Raped by her stepfather. Another girl, two years old, maybe, cries quietly, in her mother's lap. She has a bullet inside her head, the result of a disastrous police action in the slum.
War among criminal factions are part of the children's daily life. Close to the Uerê houses there is a street that can´t be crossed. It belongs to another faction. In the Olimpic Villa, across the street, a rare leisure place, it's the same thing. "Children from here can't go there, or they get beaten". Part of Ivone's work is, sometimes, negotiating lives. Like that of a kid who stole a horse, but unluckily it belonged to one of the local "bosses". He would die and asked desperately for Ivone´s help. She went over there, talked to the man surrounded by rifles, and saved kid´s life.
The story is always the same: there is another law. The project's work, thus, adapted to living together with crime, as well as dealing with the children. On Ivone´s class, windows and doors are open. Anyone may come in or out whenever they want. Almost no one leaves. Some new kids appear, sometimes a little high on drugs. They stay by the windows, looking in. One day, they accept the invitation to come in. There is care, physical contact with children. Each one who comes in gets some activity. Some play, some write, some calculate, others read and colour. In Ivone´s group, school level is so low that usually the group is the only real school for them. A ten year old girl - at the age some children already read on the Internet - strives to form syllables with an alphabet game. "She has been doing it for the last three months" says Ivone. "But she will make it." An older boy sits besides her and starts too write very well. "He was the same way, some months ago".
Carlos: a well-known path
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At the same time, on the other house, Carlos Henrique, 22, works with teenagers, also with school complementation. Like other teachers in Brazil, he needs to have other jobs: besides Maré, where he has worked for three years, he teaches on a prison and on an institution for delinquent youngsters.
According to him, Maré has the same problem as other poor Brazilian communities: bad schooling makes many children drop out and some of them have no school. A research by O Dia, a local newspaper, and CEASM, another ONG that works at Maré, showed that only there 2,000 children have no school. "Chidren leave school, they don't adapt to it. Or, on the other hand, go up to 5th grade without knowing how to write their name". The policy of "automatic promotion", that until recently did not deny approval to students up to the 5th grade is, according to Carlos, one of the responsible factors for this problem. The final result, he says, is a typical path, which he knows very well: "From the slum, the child goes to the street, then goes to a delinquent youngsters institution and then to a prison".
K., the african volunteer, adds: "There is no such thing as a lost child. They are violent because they suffer violence.". K comes from Senegal, is 37, and is studying for his Doctor's degree in Sociology. In spite of this, his view on the problem is simple: "Although Brazil is a rich country, compared to Africa, poverty is a large part of what affects children. On holidays, I see them going to streets on other parts of the city. Because at home they will feel hungry, for there is not enough food. Kids are underfed. Misery is strong". And he adds: "And it has a color."
Changing the system
Morning is over. All of them help serving lunch. This is one of the project's interesting aspects, that has a small and simple structure as a principle. Everyone helps on tasks. All the workers have access to the accounting and know how to make entries. Accounts are available on the Internet for whoever wants to see them. Everyone knows each other's wages and administrate daily events together. So, even there being only three workers and some volunteers for nearly 200 children, everything seems to work out.
Ivone, after class and serving lunch, is one of those who sweeps the room's floor. In any task, however, she takes care of the children first. She never stops. As she didn't stop when she denounced the Candelária massacre, in 1993, when eight children were killed by policemen. Or when she made her corageous testimony for the film about the 174 Bus tragedy, in Rio.
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The movie tells the story of Sandro Nascimento, one of her students, a contemporary of those who died at Candelária. An orphan, streetchild, survivor of a long story of abandon, unstructured family, misery and violence, he was surprised in a bus by a police car. Trying to escape, he decided to make the passengers his hostages. He had an old gun. He was surrounded. The tense and confuse negotiations lasted all day and were seen on TV, throughout the country. When he finally decided to leave the bus with a hostage, he was quickly dominated. During the action, the hostage was killed by a policeman's shot. The ex-streetboy was assaassinated shortly after, on the way to prison, inside the police car.
At Uerê, the kids say goodbye. Today, Ivone will leave the slum to go to the Lawyers' Order in Brazil, to strive for the case of the girl with the bullet in her head. "We need to be conscious that the world, with such unequity, will always generate aggressive youngsters. And that means war". She concludes: "Help your neighbor. This is the only way to change the system".
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