Mais Caminhos Brave Kids 14 more days before departure to Poland

From 19 June till 13 July six children from Mais Caminhos will be participating in the international intercultural programme of Brave Kids in Poland. The mission of Brave Kids is to support vulnerable young people from around the world through artistic experiences. They will be inspired to imagine a better future for themselves and their communities and gain tools to help realise their aspirations.

Mais Caminhos has a partnership with Brave Kids 2014. This year we have a selected group of six vulnerable children from the nearby favela Cantagalo / Pavaozinho who have been preparing performance for the Brave Kids event.

These are our children:

Pedro: 10, Pedro, the little boy in the blue t-shirt, comes from a really poor family without a father and he lives in the poorest area of Pavaozinho. He is the youngest of the family and he has two older sisters and one older brother. He is very intelligent, he is very quick in association and learning English, he is a good dancer and learned quickly capoeira. He has loads of energy and this can create some problems.

Nicolli:10, Nicolli’s mum works at Solar Meninos de Luz. She is only child and has half brothers and sisters. She is fun loving, very expressive and easily motivated to participate. She had a great desire to be part of this group.

Clara Débora: 11, Clara Débora comes from a family who has a bit a better income. Her parents work. She has one brother. She likes to talk, she is tall for her age and she is very much looking forward to go to Poland.

Erik: 11, Erik’s family is quite poor as well. His mom is sick and lost her vision and his father works as a doorman. He is only child. Erik is a very responsible youngster and takes incredible care of his mum. He is very intelligent and focused. From the start he was one of the children who took on every challenge we offered him.

Paola Christina: 12, Paola comes from a very poor family without a father. Her mum works in a childcare. She is the oldest and has two younger brothers one is only 6 months old. She is a caring, friendly and happy young girl.

Rebeca: 13, Rebeca’s parents work, but they struggle with poverty as well. Her mum is a cleaning lady and her father works as a doorman. She is the youngest and has one older brother and two half brothers. She likes to talk a lot and behaves like a real teenage girl. She is a great dancer and takes the lead once she starts dancing.

Our artistic support team:

Mais Caminhos is so lucky with the collaboration of a group of professional Brazilians: Créo Kellab, Virginia Martins, Dani Marie Uhebe Misailidis and Deborah Amaral Monteiro.

Créo Kellab is our theatre teacher in Mais Caminhos and he is an actor known for Assalto ao Banco Central (2011), Três Irmãs (2008) VIPs (2010) and Victoria (2015).

Virginia Martins is supporting Créo with rehearsals. She is an actress and theater teacher and she is know for Sitiados (2010), O Mural (2006), Avenida Brasil (2012).

Dani Marie Uhebe Misailidis is the choreograph of the performance together with Créo. She is a ballet dancer, choreograph of Beija Flor -one of the famous samba schools in Rio de Janeiro- and director of Ballet Misailidis.

Deborah Amaral Monteiro has organized the fabrics of the costumes and provide the clothes the children are going to use on the stage in Poland. Deborah is the owner of the Zimpy clothes stores in Rio de Janeiro.

We are proud and touched by their cooperation.

The performance

After conversations with the children about what they thought would expresses Brazil´s culture best, the artistic team created a spectacular performance consisting of 4 parts:

• the first part starts with a link to football
• the second part honors Samba as a very important dance of Brazil
• followed by Capoeira, and
• finally closed by a Passinho

Get a glimpse of their performance on our Facebook page

At the moment the children are getting more excited every day and the closer we get the more we know we have to train harder.

The last two weeks there will be more rehearsals. We will have a performance at the language school (soon to be announced), a performance in the street, and hopefully we will be able to share this with all the students of Solar Meninos de Luz, our partner and 5 students of Solar are part of this project.

Getting to know more about Poland was a big thing for the children. Urszula, one of our volunteers is Polish and happily shared with them the culture, food, temperature, clothes.

In Poland

For the two first weeks of the project, five cities in Poland will host different groups of artistic children from all over the world!
These cities are: Wroclaw, Warsaw, Puszczykowo, Walbrzych and Przemmysl.

Wroclaw is going to host our Mais Caminhos Brave Kids and they will be together with children from
Russia – Buryatia Republic
Ukraine – Lviv,
Slovakia in Wroclaw.

In each one of these cities, a big group of Brave Kids staff, volunteers and host families, will receive them with open hearts! They are welcoming them in their cities, in their homes and in their lives, hoping that all of each of them will have beautiful memories from their encounter.

Here you can see them in the Polish map in Brave Kids website: http://www.bravekids.eu/pl/editions/2015/cities

During the last week of Brave Kids, all groups will meet in one city – Zagórze Ślask!
16 countries, 20 groups, 119 kids!

It will certainly be an exciting experience, and we hope that together they can experience wonderful activities, transitions and a BETTER FUTURE!

Would you like to support this project?

We are still looking for more donations for the last ticket.

We are missing ONE ticket for Pedro (the handsome guy in the blue t-shirt). #LetTheKidsFly

We only have 14 more days to raise the money for the final ticket!! Here’s how you can help:
1. Financial donations or
2. air mile donations

You can find us everywhere and we would really appreciate it if you could spread the word! Like us on Facebook, give us a 5 stars on Google +, Tweet us on Twitter, start a discussion on LinkedIn or contact us on our Webpage: we are all ears! Do you want to become a volunteer? Do you want to become a partner? Do you have new ideas for projects or fundraising campaigns? Do not hesitate and do it.  You will be one step closer to making our students’ dreams come true.

We would like to thank all donors and sponsors. Special thanks go to our Partner and Head Sponsor the Caminhos Language Centre – the Portuguese language school for foreigners in Rio de Janeiro. Their support has made so many dreams come true.