Punho Forte Brazil with the assistance of Punho Forte Ireland currently has a 6 month lease for a community centre in the Centre of Itacaré. Ideally, we would like to have the funds available to purchase a property which could act as a permanent home to the project. It is the vision of the project that this centre will house all the educational, recreational and cultural activities of the project. It is also envisioned that this centre will become a safe, secure and relaxed environment for children to meet, interact and develop and where both children and parents can access information on services available both at the project and from local government or sister projects.

Punho Forte has been offering English, Spanish, art, photography and computer classes to children on a weekly basis depending on the availability of staff and resources. With the opening of the new community centre and recruitment and support of volunteers, both local and international, we plan to offer a structured series of courses in language, computers, cookery and other income generating activities. We also are in the process of recruiting a local teacher, paid a salary, those children who attend school to keep up with the others. Ideally the clases would be offered in association with cultural and recreational activities in order to make them more attractive to children and to improve compliance and effectiveness. Such programs to date have included art, music, dance and photography and have been very popular and successful with the children.

Sports and recreation are a huge part of Brazilian life. Itacaré’s coastal location has made it particularly appropriate for sports such as beach soccer and volleyball as well as surfing and canoeing. Capoeira, a Brasilian martial art/dance, which developed in the State of Bahia, has a very strong following in the town also. Several of the children have participated and won regional competitions in jujitsu and canoeing with support from the project. Our vision is to develop teams of children to participate in these sporting activities and that access to sporting equipment and training would act as an incentive for continued participation in educational activities.

As part of the extracurricular activities, the arts and culture programme is hoped to allow the children to partake in activities that they would not necessarily be exposed to. In this endeavour, a photography workshop was undertaken. Small groups of children moved around the community trying to capture their own vision of their environment, while taking into consideration basic photography techniques. This was achieved on a digital camera. After a period, pairs of children where provided with a disposable camera to share. This exercise promoted team work and individual creativity. Some of the photographs eventually were sold at a fundraising exhibition set up by Punho Forte Ireland in Dublin.

A great benefit of community based organisations with local volunteers is the rapport and trust which exists between the children and the staff. Local volunteers are in a unique position to identify children who are particularly vulnerable for any reason. Specifically we have become aware of children with particularly poor school advancement, illiteracy, health problems and disability, as well as those who have been subjected to domestic violence. We have provided individualized support for these children where possible. We feel that it is important to recognize the individual needs of the most vulnerable children and to provide special attention and support where necessary, as without it they will be unable to benefit from the work of the project. It will be central to the role of Punho Fortes’ volunteers to identify and act as mentors to such children.

We have been lucky enough to have the voluntary service of a trained psychologist on a part time basis. She has been in a position to work with some of the children identified by the volunteers as having behavioural or developmental problems. We have also been happy to learn from the work of Dr. Francesca Mannini, an Italian obstetrician and gynaecologist who has developed a project for teenage girls in the area concentrating on sexual health education, contraception and women’s rights. Projeto Libelula, or Dragonfly Project, is working in the same neighbourhood and is similarly constrained by finances and human resources. The state of Bahia has more teenage pregnancies then any other state in Brazil and this has obvious implications for maternal and child mortality as well as the social ramifications. Punho Forte hopes to continue to work with Projeto Libelula to expand the coverage of this essential public health intervention as well as working with local public health structures and families to improve child health in general.

The director of Punho Forte Ireland and one of the founding members of Association Punho Forte in Brazil, Dr. Bridget Freyne, is an Irish trained paediatrician with a Masters degree in International Health and experience of working in resource limited settings in Uganda, Nepal and Brazil.

Punho Forte is preparing to conduct a child health needs assessment in the favela environment in order to inform the development of both preventative and therapeutic child health interventions in the community. Punho Forte members have already raised funds on behalf of two children who suffered debilitating illness requiring medical assistance outside of the city. Poor child nutrition has been identified as a problem in Itacaré and the surrounding countryside and is known to contribute to child mortality. The project has been offering basic nutritional support in the form of a weekly meal at the centre.

In summary, our programs aim to offer innovative ways to attract the most vulnerable children in the community into a structured and supportive environment where they can develop and attain their potential. This will have enormous repercussions on the lives of the individual children but also on the social development of the city as a whole. We believe in maximizing on the enthusiasm of local volunteers and in turn providing them with support and education to enable their continued involvement. We also believe in constantly evaluating and developing our services in line with international best practice in development while keeping the focus at the community level. We would like to acknowledge the valuable knowledge and support we have gained in this regard from organisations in Ireland such as Comhlamh, Dochas, the Latin American Solidarity Centre and The Wheel.

Please find further information in our support section.