Feed and Educate Children in Salvador, Brazil

Dear Supporters, 

Our students have recently celebrated the famous Carnaval (Carnival) here in Brazil.

This year over 600,000 tourists visited Salvador for the week-long festival. Schools are closed during Carnaval week, which offers many families a much-needed opportunity to earn some money. Small enterprises spring up all over the carnival route and beach areas, and although the local authorities have been tightening the restrictions on unauthorised street vendors, a large number of the city’s children still earn money selling drinks, snacks and souvenirs and finding parking spaces for drivers. 

The situation for these kids is far from ideal, but it would be naïve to try and prevent families from taking advantage of this opportunity. Unfortunately, there is a darker side to Carnaval – crime rates (already amongst the highest in Brasil) take a dramatic rise during this week. Pickpocketing and drug dealing reach endemic levels and children, owing to their size and protection from prosecution, are sadly often involved. It is the continued work of our school to try and protect our students from becoming involved in Salvador’s criminal side.This year our school marked the carnival celebrations with a fancy dress dance. This was the culmination of a

This year our school marked the carnival celebrations with a fancy dress dance. This was the culmination of a 2-week long project organised by school teacher Andrea. The older classes read a number of books and we identified their favourite characters. Then the school staff worked with the children to create fabulous outfits for the dance from old clothes and material scraps. Take a look at some of these fabulous photos of our students dressed as characters from Peter Pan and Aladdin!

What's coming up next?

For the month of April, the children are going to embark upon a weather project – inspired by some very extreme warm and wet weather in the region recently. Andrea and her team are going to be teaching the classes all about the water cycle, the changing seasons and the effects of pollution on our environment. The skills that our teachers have learned in their part-time university studies have helped them gain the skills to tailor exercises for different age groups around the same unifying theme.

The school classrooms have received a refresh for the new year with some new tiles on the floors – these help the rooms stay clean and cool even on the hottest days – better enabling our children to concentrate on their studies in the summer months.

Still…there are times when only a quick power nap will get our kids through the hottest part of the day – as these photos will show! Nap time is important in the school day – our students attend from 8am – 4pm and many are awake very long hours due to parents work commitments – nap time is a calming period of the school day, after lunch has been served, which helps energise the kids for the afternoon session. 

Finally, we are very pleased to say that 3 of our kids started reading for the first time this month – we are so proud of them! 

Thank you for your continued support!

With Gratitude, 
Grandmother Clara’s Dream Educational Community Creche