a baby,’ she told me, emphatically. Maria’s mum then whispered that, after a Plan workshop, she started secretly taking the pill. Her sister is operating a similar subterfuge. They dare not tell their husbands. Both women yearn to have their fallopian tubes tied. I asked why their husbands wouldn’t go for the snip, being a much simpler operation. Maria’s mum shrugged. ‘It’s impossible to convince my husband to wear a condom, let alone have a vasectomy,’ she sighed.
So, what is Plan doing to help these brave women of Brazil? A better question would be, what are they
not
doing? Education, sanitation, nutrition, child protection, literacy workshops, health centres offering free contraception, after-school theatre workshops and football coaching to get kids off the streets – Plan immerse themselves in communities, building long term support and empowering people to fulfil their potential and improve their lives. When it was discovered that Maria and her friends were not attending school as it was too far away, Plan built a school nearby. It is here that the children often get their only meal of the day. (The school has two shifts, one from 7am to 1 pm, another from 1 pm to 5 pm.) In 2007, only 79.2% of children in the north-east of Brazil completed primary school. Brazil has the largest population of under six-year-olds in the Americas.
Plan trains teachers and community volunteers to help young children learn to read. They work with the Brazilian government on eradicating child labour, and providing emergency shelter and food when mud slides destroy communities during the wet season. For the past two years, Plan has been encouraging communities to develop allotments to grow food. In this part of Brazil, young children are fed a staple diet of mingau, a watery porridge made from farine, a starchy flour with low nutritional value. Now families are growing beans, vegetables and herbs like parsley, a spoonful of which every day has enough vitamin A to sustain a child.
There is so much violence in the favelas that children are not safe on the streets. And yet at home, domestic violence against the women and children is astronomically high. With much police corruption (people had told me that if you see a policeman in Brazil – run) Plan’s counsellors, elected by other locals, can be an alternative source of intervention, offering shelter and help.
Without the support of Plan, standing up to the macho Brazilian men, a corrupt police force and the patriarchal Catholic Church would be like facing up to Darth Vader with a butter knife.
As pregnancy consigns many Brazilian women to poverty, it seems clear that Catholicism kills. The dying process begins the moment we come into the world, but it sure speeds up if you are poor in Brazil. Two hundred and twenty-five children under the age of five die every day in Brazil. Thirty-one per cent of family houses in urban areas don’t have access to basic sanitation which results in 2,500 deaths a year of children under five as a consequence of the contamination of the water by fecal matter. The number of young murder victims grew five-fold in the last twenty years. Nearly fifty youths are murdered every day. 17,312 youths aged between fifteen and twenty-four years were murdered in 2006.
The Pope promotes abstinence. Well, yes, of course, the one hundred percent safe oral contraceptive is the word ‘no’. But with child prostitution and rape rife, this is not an option. Termination is illegal, so when women go to the hospital bleeding from a self-administered abortion, the doctors must report them to the police. One hundred women are currently awaiting trial on self-abortion charges. Recently, a nine-year-old girl was raped by her stepfather. She became pregnant with twins. The Bishop for Pernambuco swore to excommunicate the family and the doctors if they aborted the foetus. And yet it’s clear the sanctity of life stops the moment the baby is born – after that the
So, what is Plan doing to help these brave women of Brazil? A better question would be, what are they
not
doing? Education, sanitation, nutrition, child protection, literacy workshops, health centres offering free contraception, after-school theatre workshops and football coaching to get kids off the streets – Plan immerse themselves in communities, building long term support and empowering people to fulfil their potential and improve their lives. When it was discovered that Maria and her friends were not attending school as it was too far away, Plan built a school nearby. It is here that the children often get their only meal of the day. (The school has two shifts, one from 7am to 1 pm, another from 1 pm to 5 pm.) In 2007, only 79.2% of children in the north-east of Brazil completed primary school. Brazil has the largest population of under six-year-olds in the Americas.
Plan trains teachers and community volunteers to help young children learn to read. They work with the Brazilian government on eradicating child labour, and providing emergency shelter and food when mud slides destroy communities during the wet season. For the past two years, Plan has been encouraging communities to develop allotments to grow food. In this part of Brazil, young children are fed a staple diet of mingau, a watery porridge made from farine, a starchy flour with low nutritional value. Now families are growing beans, vegetables and herbs like parsley, a spoonful of which every day has enough vitamin A to sustain a child.
There is so much violence in the favelas that children are not safe on the streets. And yet at home, domestic violence against the women and children is astronomically high. With much police corruption (people had told me that if you see a policeman in Brazil – run) Plan’s counsellors, elected by other locals, can be an alternative source of intervention, offering shelter and help.
Without the support of Plan, standing up to the macho Brazilian men, a corrupt police force and the patriarchal Catholic Church would be like facing up to Darth Vader with a butter knife.
As pregnancy consigns many Brazilian women to poverty, it seems clear that Catholicism kills. The dying process begins the moment we come into the world, but it sure speeds up if you are poor in Brazil. Two hundred and twenty-five children under the age of five die every day in Brazil. Thirty-one per cent of family houses in urban areas don’t have access to basic sanitation which results in 2,500 deaths a year of children under five as a consequence of the contamination of the water by fecal matter. The number of young murder victims grew five-fold in the last twenty years. Nearly fifty youths are murdered every day. 17,312 youths aged between fifteen and twenty-four years were murdered in 2006.
The Pope promotes abstinence. Well, yes, of course, the one hundred percent safe oral contraceptive is the word ‘no’. But with child prostitution and rape rife, this is not an option. Termination is illegal, so when women go to the hospital bleeding from a self-administered abortion, the doctors must report them to the police. One hundred women are currently awaiting trial on self-abortion charges. Recently, a nine-year-old girl was raped by her stepfather. She became pregnant with twins. The Bishop for Pernambuco swore to excommunicate the family and the doctors if they aborted the foetus. And yet it’s clear the sanctity of life stops the moment the baby is born – after that the
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