Development
Assistance Project 
OSSAM
of the Congregation of Franciscan Nuns
Maristella do Brasil
in
Timbaúba- Pernambuco Brazil
(text: Jürgen W. Kriks, photos: Uwe Kriks, editing: Carla Lovett/Teresa Salinas)
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1. Development assistance in Brazil
Brazil is a gigantic country, in many senses. The authors of this report got the chance to know parts of this country, whether travelling through it as tourists or being in contact with the underprivileged people, the poor and therefore often forgotten.
For several years the authors have supported social projects in the so-called poor regions of the world, Brazil among them. This project was founded by German Franciscan nuns of the monastery Maria Stern in Augsburg, Germany. Named OSSAM (the acronym for the Brazilian “Obra Social Santa Maria”), this organization manages a development assistance project for children and juveniles and their families in a small town in northeastern Brazil called Timbaúba, which has about 60,000 residents.
Before we introduce the OSSAM project, we first want you readers to become familiar with the problems of the so-called “children with special social needs” in Brazil. For this, the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development (NFSD) has published an excellent article, which describes these problems, in our opinion, in a very precise manner. We nearly totally quoted this article. It portrays the societal problematic nature, which is causing childhood on the streets, in a very objective way and we share its conclusions. Their original article can be read on the website: http://www.foundation.novartis.com
1.1. Brazil - land of contrasts
In developmental terms, Brazil is defined as an emerging economy: it is at the upper end of the middle-income category. The scale of the Brazilian economy, the country's abundance of natural resources and land, its diversified manufacturing structure, and its high degree of industrialization all point to successful development. Yet these factors also obscure the pronounced disparities that divide the country.
The contrasts between rich and poor - between modern industrialization and colonial-feudal agricultural and ownership structures - are more extreme in Brazil than in almost any other country. It is as if the people of one and the same nation were living in two different worlds. According to the UN Development Program, nearly half of Brazil's population lives in absolute poverty. With a population of 168 million (mid-1999), Brazil is among countries that have the highest absolute number of people living in poverty. 43.5% of Brazil's population eke out a living on less than USD 2 per day. The situation of these people is not much different from the circumstances in which the poorest of the poor live in other parts of the world. Thus, over one million children under five are undernourished. Health care, sanitary facilities and food resources are inadequate for most of the population, while education is the privilege of a select few. Although Brazil is the world's eighth largest industrial nation, it ranks 62nd on the UNDP's 1998 Human Development Index (HDI).
Great numbers of Brazil's most destitute people live in the slums of the big cities, the so-called favelas, where the infrastructure, especially the drinking water and drainage systems, is deficient. Slum dwellers squat on land to which they have no legal title. But since this is mostly unused and unusable public land - hillsides, swamps, lagoons, rubbish dumps, and so on - they are not likely to be evicted.
Where these impoverished people live within sight of the pleasant living conditions enjoyed by the privileged elite, social tensions and the potential for conflict grow. The streets of large cities such as Rio de Janeiro are increasingly the scene of confrontations between rich and poor. Those who are unable to make a living as vendors of newspapers or lottery tickets, shoeshine boys, guards for parked cars or the like, are often forced to earn a living illegally. Even within the slums there is virtually no place for solidarity: when someone else's existence is a threat to one's own, self-interest comes first.
Extreme population density and crowded living conditions in the slums, combined with the struggle to survive, generally lead not only to social disintegration but also to violence within the family and to broken families. This makes the situation even more difficult for children and young people, and at least partly accounts for their increasing presence on the streets. The growing number of children who work on the streets, or even live there permanently, is one of the most pressing development problems world-wide. But of Latin American countries known to have "street children," first and foremost is Brazil, where their numbers are estimated to have reached 10 million. Along with suffering hunger, being undernourished, and being exposed to disease, probably nothing contributes more to the loss of human development potential than a childhood and youth spent outside the institutional framework of family and school in the usually hostile environment of the street.
1.2. Home street home
Extensive literature exists on the phenomenon of "street children." This literature is full of contradictions, motivated by anything from starry-eyed social romanticism to ideological opportunism. Depending on the author, the street child is portrayed in every imaginable hue. One version glorifies this figure as personifying a counterculture opposing the prevailing social order, whose "victim" is the child. Life on the streets becomes "street culture," and its values are defined by a code of "street ethics." Another version indulges in presenting the street child as "charming" and "pitiable"- but only as long as he or she is still small and "cute." This viewpoint changes abruptly when the child reaches puberty: it is then described as a "delinquent, lazy, homosexual, aggressive nuisance addicted to drugs," and therefore one that "belongs in an institution." In further variations on the theme, the street child is described either as mentally ill, feeble-minded or suffering from dissociation, or else as a "perfectly normal" and particularly clever person, with an intelligence sometimes thought to be well above average. But of course, the street child does not exist. While dire need is indeed one of the critical factors, a childhood on the streets is a phenomenon the causes of which are as diverse as the individual characters of children and youths themselves.
Another stereotype arises from naming all children who are out on the streets "street children." Indeed, most of them only appear to be left to their own fate. The street is merely their workplace, or - for lack of well-run, affordable kindergartens and youth centres - their day-time abode, where they spend all their time while their parents (often just their single mother) are at work. For this reason they are called children on the streets (meniños na rua), as opposed to the relatively small number of "genuine" street children (meniños da rua or children of the street), who have tenuous family ties or none at all, and live on the streets day and night. Given all these differences, no single strategy exists for social reintegration or for preventing children from ending up on the streets.
But the distinction between "children on the streets" and "children of the streets" should not obscure the fact that the step towards becoming a "genuine" street child is very small:
Source: Lusk, Mark W.: Street Children Programs in Latin America.
In: Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Vol.16, No.1, March 1989.
The largest category consists of children living in absolute poverty. These children grow up in an extremely underprivileged social environment. They lack the most elemental means to meet basic needs and usually receive hardly any or no parental care, because their mothers (who are often the only parent) are forced to seek some means of subsistence. In the absence of day-care facilities, the children, even toddlers, are left on their own. This exposes them to a high risk of starting an early "career" on the street.
As a next step, these children are forced to fend for themselves at the earliest possible moment, and they may even have to contribute to the family income. They thus become "children on the street," working as shoeshine boys, vendors of sweets, lottery tickets, newspapers, etc. They clean the windshields of cars stalled in traffic, perform little stunts, and so on. To improve their meagre daily take, they may also beg - and if this is not enough, they steal. Tragically, child prostitution and drug-dealing are prevalent financial attractions as well. The children often cannot go home in the evening and frequently spend a few nights on the street, either because their working day is too long and home is too far away, or because they do not have enough money for the bus fare. They may also be unwelcome unless they bring home enough money. This is why it is not easy to differentiate between them and the "genuine" street children.
"Genuine" street children or "children of the street" are either orphans or children who have been turned out or abandoned by their parents. But most of them have run away from home. The street is not just their workplace, it is their home. In this final stage the rupture between the child and adult society is complete. Because they live in a complete legal vacuum, these children are acutely exposed to repression and exploitation - often by public police officers. They buy tolerance by prostituting themselves, stealing for the officers, or giving them part of their income or booty. At any time they can be reminded that they have acted illegally; they can also be expelled, abused, or even killed.
Whatever category one may be talking about, the phenomenon of childhood on the streets has to be seen in the broader context of the "street population" as a whole. The cities of Latin America teem with displaced and homeless people who had to escape from arid rural areas because it was no longer possible to survive there. But living space in the congested cities is scarce, and the notion that a dwelling place in the slums is free of rent is wrong. There, too, groups exist who "control" the space available and collect money for it. Many rural migrants cannot even afford a shack.
1.3. Aid is "no child's play"
Many street children are still being brought to overcrowded public institutions, although events such as murders and revolts within such institutions in the past have made them famous in a tragic sense. State institutions are still places that trigger negative associations in the minds of children and young people on the streets. Such scandalous cases as the "clean-up operation" in 1974, when approximately one hundred vagrant children on the streets of São Paulo were caught and murdered, and daily experiences with adults who want to "take care of" children and young people but have everything other than care in mind, have led to radical distrust among street children.
Since public attention has been drawn to the world-wide problem of street children, international organizations, government agencies, and private welfare organizations and associations have increasingly chosen them as a focus of their work. On the one hand this is positive; on the other hand, it sometimes leads to the "Calcutta Syndrome," where compassion is temporarily lavished mainly on smaller children. Street children are actually wooed by many projects. As a result, the streets become particularly attractive to children from the slums. They move rapidly from project to project, taking advantage of what is on offer, although this does nothing to get them off the streets.
For this and numerous other reasons, the "palliative" approach should increasingly be abandoned in favour of a preventive approach focusing mainly on organising the poor settlements and providing them with what is most necessary in terms of infrastructure. "Partial treatment" fails to deal with the heart of the matter - the family and its socio-economic plight - and only perpetuates the problem. That is why recent literature in the field insists more and more on "community development" and participatory strategies that foster active collaboration and initiative among families and communities. One priority for community initiatives is to create day-care centres for children that are affordable and within reach of everyone. Additional important goals in the overall effort to organize poor neighborhoods include adequate water supply and sewage disposal, health care facilities, and community centres and associations that aim to encourage communal activities.
1.4. Conclusions
The report of the NFSD concerning street children in Brazil shows, on the one hand, the problematic nature of "childhood on the streets;" and holding fast to this analysis it also gives on the other hand proposals for development assistance projects beyond the so-called "Calcutta Syndrome" within the framework of community development with participatory strategies.
One development assistance project in northeastern Brazil, which has been supported for years by the authors of this article, attempts to realize a similar goal. The Day-Care Center of Timbaúba is managed by the congregation of Franciscan nuns of Maria Stern in Augsburg, Germany. The main goal of their work, as the manager of the day-care center, Sr. M. Sofia Salanga says, is "not letting the children come to the point of no return," where they will definitely end up on the streets. Seeing this motive realized is the main goal of this short documentation.
2. The Day-Care Center OSSAM in Timbaúba, Pernambuco, Brazil
The following documentation is based on an article we cite in the bibliography at the end. It’s the so-called “Einführungsbericht” of Kindernothilfe from 1989, based on an essay by the manager of OSSAM, Sr. M. Sofia Salanga. With the kind permission of Sr. M. Sofia we base this report on her essay. Since the essay is already about 12 years old, we updated and if necessary changed it on the basis of several life interviews we did during our last visits to Timbaúba.
2.1. Timbaúba and the problems of families in need
The city of Timbaúba (60,000 inhabitants) is located in the Federal State Pernambuco, which is located in northeastern Brazil. It’s about 100 km from the Federal Capital Recife and about 30 km from the boundary of Paraiba, the neighboring Federal State. The city lies in the so-called “Zona da Mata,” the former forested, hot, and humid coastal zone, where sugarcane is now cultivated exclusively.
The people of this area mainly worked till a few years ago on sugarcane plantations and in the sugar mill where, if times were good, there would only be work for about five to seven months. In the last few years two-thirds of the sugar mills and sugarcane distilleries were closed. Also the fabrication of shoes in small factories and households, which was said to be remarkable in former years, as well as the work of mid-sized cotton spinneries and cotton weaving mills have recently been negatively affected under the pressure of worldwide globalization and modernization, so that they no longer play a role in the employment of the region. The people try to dig through their lives with casual jobs, and those who find a job for minimum wage can call themselves happy. Otherwise, informal and unorganized trading in low-quality goods has increased. But this can only be called the last straw for those who are nearly bare of hope and don’t want to bring themselves totally down. Within the poor population are many offspring of slaves who worked on sugarcane plantations before. They are still dependent on the landlords. Another part of the population are migrants who in times of aridity left the rural areas to work in the market of the city or to offer their services in various fields, just to earn some money for their livelihood.
The city itself expands from a river valley over three hills. On the bottom of the valley are the villas and businesses of the rich and wealthy, while the people in need live all the way up those three hills.
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Here the small houses and cottages don’t have an adequate water supply or sewage disposal. On top of each hill there is a water tank for the entire population on and beneath the hill, where all families, unaffected by the number of members, are allowed to fill two canisters with drinking water every morning and evening. Many of these cottages were built with wood and loam and so they don’t protect the people living in them during the rainy season, when they definitely would need some more protection. These homes can barely stand the weather and mostly tumble down. Just a few people have their own cottage. Most of them pay a high price for a humble room. The cottages are mostly very small and tight and not nearly is there enough room for each person to have his or her own bed.
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So the children share their bed with one or two of their brothers or sisters, sleep in a hammock or sometimes sleep on the naked floor, covered with a blanket or a piece of cardboard. There is no room for learning or just playing. Very often you’ll see the children sitting on the doorsill with books on their knees doing their homework amid the noise and unrest of their younger brothers and sisters.
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The children play in the ditches, washed out by rain, which are the actual spillways and taluses of those quarters or they do their playing right on the garbage dumps.
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The economic situation of these families can be marked as bad. Nearly all of them get the official minimum wage, the so-called “salario minimo” of about 151,-- R$ (status January 2001). However, this minimum wage isn’t enough to feed a family with three to eight children. The jobs in which the men work are hard. They work 10 to 14 hours a day, sometimes even on Sundays. The women try to increase the income by doing the laundry for the rich or by doing some manufacturing at home, which is often time intensive but lowly paid. At the age of about eight years the girls are already in charge of taking care of their younger brothers and sisters, and the boys of the same age have to support their families by selling ice cream, fruit, peanuts, and other goods, which they try to offer at the homes of the rich people. At the age of twelve, the boys follow their fathers to assist them on the sugarcane plantations. For this and numerous other reasons children of about nine to ten years of age don’t attend schools anymore and for professional training in their later years there isn’t money and time anyway.
Nutrition is deficient and one-sided. There isn’t enough money for the families to buy basic foods like rice, corn, and beans, not to mention fruit, vegetables, and meat. Often only manioc flour, having no nutritive value, gets mixed with sugar for food. Or the people just drink sugar water or suck on pieces of sugarcane. These actions only appease the main hunger of the poor. So undernourishment and the diseases that come with it threaten the lives of these people from the beginning; even newborns are already undernourished. Since fresh milk is too expensive, mothers stretch instant milk powder with flour pap, allowing this food to last a few days more. Contaminated drinking water and lack of hygiene lead to parasitosis and/or dermatosis, enteritis, and other intestinal infections. Accordingly the infant mortality rate is very high. Although federal health stations provide antibiotics and other medicine in most cases, they are merely dealing with consequences and not fighting the roots of those diseases, which lie in these insufficient living conditions.
In Timbaúba there are some private schools and also nursery schools, but they are not free; tuition fees are required and families have to pay for teaching materials as well. These schools which can be attended from the age of two or three years are therefore not accessible by the children of the poor.
Thereto the manager of the day-care center says: “This is just one of many examples of inequity: Children who already have everything at home like food, toys, educated parents, housemaids and therefore every chance for their physical and mental development, get, in addition, the chance to attend a private school. Children of the poor who have nothing at all and sometimes get locked at home for hours with just some food, whilst their mothers do the laundry for the rich, for those children there is no such preparatory training for the coming school classes of alphabetization. This inequity starts right from birth and will continue and multiply through all stages of life.” (Original text in German – translated by J. W. Kriks)
The lessons in public schools are insufficient for various reasons: the education of the teachers doesn’t take into consideration the living conditions of the children; and the teaching materials and the tools for teaching and education aren’t available in time, are lacking or are missing. The undernourished children can’t concentrate and don’t have enough time to do their homework. The percentage of children who have to repeat grades is very high and those kids lose more and more their motivation to learn. For these and other reasons children of the poor barely complete elementary school (4th grade) and even less finish middle school (8th grade) or complete their professional training (e.g. teaching, accountancy, nursing). Often those kids stay on the same path as their parents, working on sugarcane plantations, as hacks or, if they are lucky, at a job in a factory or a garage. The girls often get married at the age of 13 to 15 years and become exploited as housemaids or laundresses. Only a few of them escape this vicious cycle.
2.2. The project OSSAM - Obra Social Santa Maria in Timbaúba / Pernambuco
OSSAM in Timbaúba tries to find a solution for those problems. It was founded as social work of “Colegio Santa Maria,” which is a private school and is mainly attended by children of the rich. The school belongs to the Franciscan congregation “Franciscana Maristella do Brasil,” with its seat in Augsburg, Germany. The nuns of this school also try to support with their financial return the day-care project of OSSAM. Today this is insufficient or doesn’t help at all, for the private schools in Brazil have been sacrificed by their government and are having severe difficulties surviving themselves. The buildings of OSSAM were erected on the outskirts of Timbaúba in 1981. For the lessons of the older kids and the day care there are five group rooms and six specially equipped rooms. Additionally there is a kitchen, a small office, two stores, eight restrooms, two bathrooms, a surrounding garden, a playground, and a small football field. A small family house with a yard, which also can be used as a shelter, was bought some time ago.
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OSSAM in Timbaúba tries to find a solution for those problems. It was founded as social work of “Colegio Santa Maria,” which is a private school and is mainly attended by children of the rich.
The school belongs to the Franciscan congregation “Franciscana Maristella do Brasil,” with its seat in Augsburg, Germany. The nuns of this school also try to support with their financial return the day-care project of OSSAM. Today this is insufficient or doesn’t help at all, for the private schools in Brazil have been sacrificed by their government and are having severe difficulties surviving themselves.
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The buildings of OSSAM were erected on the outskirts of Timbaúba in 1981. For the lessons of the older kids and the day care there are five group rooms and six specially equipped rooms. Additionally there is a kitchen, a small office, two stores, eight restrooms, two bathrooms, a surrounding garden, a playground, and a small football field. A small family house with a yard, which also can be used as a shelter, was bought some time ago.
In this project children who come from families that have to live on minimum wage or less are favored. The types of programs which are offered are oriented to the needs of children, juveniles, and their families. Currently OSSAM offers the following programs:
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Offering: |
Times of care: | Number of children: |
| Elementary
school
(=school preparing program) |
4 h /day | 100 |
| Alphabetization class | 8 h / day | 35 |
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Hoard (=schulbegleitende Massnahme) |
4 h / day | 210 |
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Classes preparing for job skills: handicraft, manual skills, ice production, and ice selling.
Professional training: typing / computing shoemaking dressmaking and textile working electro installation auto mechanic, approx 40 - 50 juveniles
Additionally, there are two classes for the alphabetization of adults and one class for pregnant women. (status January 2001). |
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For the education, administration and social work, the magistrature of Timbaúba pays for five clerks; the other 20 clerks are partially paid by the German Kindernothilfe e.V. and through various German donations. The congregation itself places the manager and a young nun as teacher. Additionally there is a small amount of federal financial support. The children of the elementary school attend for four hours a day. They play, get mental and emotional support, and are trained in their linguistic, social, and motor skills.
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Due to the insufficient financial situation of the families, the children have to deal with inadequate nutrition, as mentioned above. So that these children can appropriately develop and learn, they need a diet that is balanced and rich in vitamins and other nutrients. Therefore, a fundamental component of the group work with the kids is a common lunch. It assists, in addition to the bare intake of nutritive substances, in developing a sense of solidarity.
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In the last year of elementary school the children are prepared for alphabetization classes, so that they can start the first grade of public schools well prepared. A most important part of what OSSAM does is supporting learning to read and to write. As soon as possible the kids are introduced to “loving books” and how better to accomplish this than through the peer group itself once again. As one already knows, illiteracy is one of the main causes of poverty and dependence.
During regular business hours the kids are able to borrow books in the small library of the institution. And that they take the chance to do so willingly and that they enjoy reading books is evident in the following photos.
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The majority of the older kids and juveniles attend public schools in Timbaúba while a smaller part gets the chance to attend the congregation’s private school, the “Escola Maria Stella.” These students don’t have to pay the tuition fees and the needed school materials and school uniforms are paid for by OSSAM. In the hoard of OSSAM the kids and juveniles can do their work and get additional lessons (if needed), scripture lessons and, of course, their meals. Additionally there are the aforementioned classes to take (see classes preparing for job skills).
Professional training starts after graduation from school. OSSAM, which in the beginning was founded mainly for preschool education and day care, widened its working field based on its experiences during the years. And now OSSAM is also guiding juveniles beyond graduation from school and offering professional training in varied areas. To some degree those occupations have a federal graduation, which, after successful final exams and subsequent diploma, always offers a great advantage while job hunting. For girls and young women practical life training offerings in sewing, embroidery, and other handicrafts are offered.
The following photos give an impression of the training reality:
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Training in the training room in wood techniques and |
...... electro installation |
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Girls sewing dresses |
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Prospective auto mechanics during their training in the garage. In cooperation with SENAI (comparable to the Chambers of handicraft) OSSAM offers a federal graduation and two-year professional training program for auto mechanics.
To summarize, this shows that the caretaking and training system of OSSAM is built systematically according to the individual needs of several ages. The children are helped at their point of need and their surrounding life reality is integrated. This sort of social work won’t ignore the real needs of these children.
Therefore children and juveniles from the favelas of Timbaúba get the chance to avoid a childhood of/on the streets and their human right to education and training is realized.
In this way the projects of OSSAM contribute to raising a new generation that takes responsibility for the family and other social groups, at work, at home, or in public. This should be a generation that knows its rights and also knows methods by which to achieve them; a generation in which everyone behaves democratically, honestly, and as a Christian guarantor who is also willing, able, and reliable, acting as a real brother for all.
This means, in addition to individual social work with kids and juveniles, also working with the family. In active and confrontational social work, visits with the families in their individual surroundings promotes the possibility of learning more about specific problems and needs in order to offer more precise help. This kind of support may center on different issues and can range from lending devices to a household to help with school material to giving small monetary loans for house construction materials. But inherent in this assistance is the motto “Help for Self-Help.” In meetings every month themes like hygiene, nutrition, family life, and child education are discussed. Local politics and active participation in the community are fundamental issues for social work, with participation as its central focus.
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And here the circle is completed back to those aforementioned elements of a development-assistant-political modern social work in chapter 1.3, that abandon a merely "palliative" approach in favor of a preventive, participating “ social community development.” The goal is to encourage mostly passive recipients to see that they have the ability to influence their socioeconomic circumstances themselves and to make them able to do that in order to renew the society at least mid-term or long-term through the alteration of consciousness.
3. Ways to support OSSAM
OSSAM in the city of Timbaúba is doing a great and modern social work in northeastern Brazil, which is called the almshouse of Brazil. This is what the authors of this article think and they got this personal impression through several visits there.Therefore they support this development assistance project.
The previous documentation by no means calls itself comprehensive in portraying the current network of help. It’s just a rough summary, but it sheds light on all the facets of the project. This project is a coherent network of several sources of help. Due to the dedication of every worker it has remained living through the years. With the changes of the social community it always renewed itself, without ever having become unfaithful to the principles of Christian social work and Christian development assistance. In Germany, the Kindernothilfe e.V. and its Brazilian partner AMENCAR support this project through project patronages or personal child-sponsorship. If you readers are interested in this kind of sponsorship, please contact the Kindernothilfe e.V. directly (Kindernothilfe e.V., Postfach 281143, D47241 Duisburg, Germany).
But there is also a way to support OSSAM more directly.
For further information please contact:
Jürgen W. Kriks, Gerlachstrasse 23, D – 97922 Lauda-Königshofen, Germany
or by e-mail: Juergen.Kriks@t-online.de
4. Bibliography
Kindernothilfe: Einführungsbericht. Tagesstätte „Centro Social Estrela do Guarani“, Timbaúba, Bundesstaat Pernambuco/Brasilien - Projekt Nr. 9350. (Stand Juli 1989)
Lusk, Mark W.: Street Children Programs in Latin America. In: Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Vol.16, No.1, March 1989
Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development -NFSD : Street Children of Brazil Novartis 2001.
5. Pictures
All pictures are from the personal photo archive of Mr. Uwe Kriks and of his property
Note: Copyright © 2001 by Mr. Jürgen W. Kriks and Mr. Uwe Kriks. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission from the publishers.
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My special thanks to my dear friend Carla and Uwe’s girlfriend Teresa for editing the article. You did a great job!!!!
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