Capoeira Cidadã
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the problem:
According to the movie Favela Rising, between the years 1987 and 2001, 463 youth were murdered in Israel and Palestine combined. During the same period, 3,937 youth were murdered in a single city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. In the ongoing war, police and trafícantes (drug dealers) often recruit from the same population of undereducated and poor young men, offering a choice between impunity and low pay as a police officer, or fast cash and a short life as a drug trafficker.
Cidade de Deus is a district located in the western part of the city of Rio de Janeiro, which evolved from a failed government attempt to eradicate slums in 1966. Nearly all of City of God’s almost 50 thousand inhabitants are at some level of poverty. This not only places them in the lowest economic class, but they also present with social indicators, such as violence, unemployment, and teen pregnancy, which are among the highest in Rio de Janeiro. A family's average income is $50 per month, and children are bound to work for survival from an early age. They often suffer from extremely unstable family structure—often a single mother with several children—or even parental abandonment. There is minimal government infrastructure to take up the slack. To make matters worse, the film Cidade de Deus brought worldwide attention to the district in 2002, reinforcing a stigma of a dangerous and violent community and leading to continued marginalization and exclusion of the district’s residents from simple things such as employment.
The most successful ways for the children of Cidade de Deus to overcome the hurdle of social exclusion is through education and economic opportunity. However, there are many barriers. The children receive little to no motivation to attend school from their families. Teachers frequently don’t/can’t show for class, and so the children end up in the streets. Further more, a system of social graduation regardless of attendance or performance has served to inflate the number of children who should be able to read and write at a certain level that cannot do so. Those who work with them regularly say that in spoken and written communication, the students frequently don’t understand or express themselves as well as they should. The result is thousands of children are having a difficult time understanding and interacting with the world around them.
There is also a dearth of economic opportunity outside of the drug trade. It is important to recognize that the economic demands of the environment requires many families to utilize their children to assist in various tasks or works at a very young age. While this may be critical to the families’ survival in the short term, it serves to undermine the future of the children by preventing from the academic and professional skills they need. The lure of quick money working as couriers for the drug dealers, is a common practice in Rio’s favelas that introduces many them into the world of violence that is narcotics trafficking. All of these things serve to illuminate the need to address the economics of attending school in any effort that addresses school attendance.
vital stats:
people impacted:
120people involved:
7why it's important:
My experiences serving in Iraq and seeing the effects of violence and poverty on children there cemented my dedication to incorporating education and opportunity into the lives of at risk youth. I believe that by providing a safe space and a supportive community to develop and practice tangible skills we empower children to seek out opportunities that they would have previously considered outside their grasp.
the plan of action:
Capoeira Cidadã is a non-profit serving the community of Cidade de Deus that grew out of a community project based in Mestre Curumim’s capoeira academy. Capoeira Cidadã uses access to training in capoeira, Brazil’s national sport, as an incentive to stay in school. It also provides concrete skills such as instrument/clothing production and practice instructing capoeria that provide economic opportunity. Capoiera Cidadã fosters academic and personal development by giving the students a supportive community, motivation to stay in school, and an opportunity for economic growth and professionalization. Capoeira Cidadã currently reaches over 80 children ages 4 – 18 years old and plans to grow to 120 students within a year.
Each day, Capoeira Cidadã provides lessons in capoeira to those students who attend school that day. After school tutoring sessions in reading, writing, and math ensure that students are engaging with the material they are learning in class. This structure creates a close network that supports their progress through school and life.
Capoeira is more than just incentive to stay in school. It is also an extraordinarily effective tool that the program leverages to build community and participant self-confidence; it is an outlet in which each student can succeed and develop a productive role within the community. As Mestre Curumim noted, “One student can sing, another is going to play, another is going to do the instruments, another one is going to be good at acrobatics, and another is going to be doing fighting.” The multiple definitions of success mean that each student can realize satisfaction and feel that they are able to do something well.
Additionally, Capoeira Cidadã is working to establish two tracks for professional development through apprenticeship. Empowering youth with the ability to create their own income is essential in helping them to create productive places for themselves within their community.
The first track will be a year of workshops that will develop student artists skilled in instrument and clothing production that can be sold for profit, both through the organization and individually. As these students train younger students in the necessary skills of production they will create a sustainable co-operative and their own sources of income.
The second track is found within the structure of capoeira itself. It is a professional art and as such it has a formal system of progression that leads to recognition of mastership. Those students who choose to study capoeira as a profession will be able to work both as a performer and a teacher. It is the nature of capoeira that masters inherently work within their community as leaders, creating a new cycle of sustainable change.
The multi-faceted approach of Capoeira Cidadã has the potential to have an incredible impact on helping children from the Cidade de Deus community break through barriers in the face of generations of social exclusion. This unique combination of artistic engagement, personal and professional development, and entrepreneurial opportunity presents a model for other programs throughout world that work with children in areas of poverty and conflict.
how you can get involved:
We just acquired a new building and are in the process of gutting and rebuilding it. This new building will house our office, capoeira studio, educational support classes, and instrument making workshops. In order to help move toward sustainability we are also building a small dorm where we can rent space to people who are traveling to Rio to train capoeira and a small office that will be rented by a program that provides tutoring for college entrance exams. The funds from these rentals will cover nearly all of the operating cost of the entire building and allow us to invest more into our programs.
WHAT WE NEED:
Donations of any amount that will allow us to buy the materials that we need to finish construction. We need to raise $4,000 over the next month in order to complete the building by the time students return to school.
If you are interested in donating, please contact us at: contato@capoeiracidada.org.br
Comments
Sounds like a great cause! Have you applied for a DoSomething Grant? www.dosomething.org/grants