Ariele

Ariele is nine years old. She lives with her brother and grandmother in the little hut you can see in the background. I took a lot of photographs of very happy children as they received one of the 200 backpacks filled with school material we distributed along the BR101, the highway that follows the Brazilian coast from North to South. But I chose this one for today's blip because it best represents what I witnessed this Sunday. Most of the homes we were invited into consist of nothing more than improvised walls built of wood and clay. People sleep on dirty mattresses on the floor, they have no bathrooms, no proper sanitary installations or kitchens. The children are caught up in a cycle of poverty and violence with almost no hope of breaking out.
I say "almost" because I also witnessed the other side: 30 young men and women, all in their twenties, joining forces to bring a little bit of light to these children. Projeto Amar ("Project Love") was founded two years ago by then 19-year-old Breno Rebouças, and what he has done and accomplished in these two years is simply astonishing. Projeto Amar has been able to recruit 80 volunteers, all of them young Brazilians, and they have been able to build three houses for families in need, they have distributed school material worth around ten thousand dollars to more than 500 children, they have joined forces with other organizations and offered courses on basic hygiene, etc. etc. They are not linked to or financed by any church or international NGO.
Hope for these children doesn't come from my generation. Most people in my age who could be doing something spend their time sitting in church or city councils and comissions telling their youth that they have to take it easy and think things through before acting. But these young people won't have nothing of that. These twenty somethings are heeding the call to love our neighbor, and they are living it actively. They have understood that love is a verb.
This week, Breno and I will head back out to BR101 every morning and revisit some of the families we felt are in a desperate situation to see if there is anything we can do for them. This will pretty much dominate my blips this week.


The extra shows beautiful Ariele (with a heartwarming smile on her face) and her grandmother.



MMC17 Day #13