ARCA (Association to Reintegrate Children and Adolescents)

For many years, ARCA has worked with the network of homeless youth services to provide arts education and recreation for poor children in Betim, an industrial city near Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Unfortunately, the recent change in government and its leaders’ association with the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Democratic Socialist) has cut much of the program’s funding.

ARCA’s current work includes workshops in several areas. Classes integrate paying, middle class students with poor and homeless children on scholarship.

1. Computers. ARCA gives 4 classes on how to use computers, with 12 students (and 6 computers) per class.
   
2. Carpentry: adolescents learn to make furniture and toys
   
3. Theater: one of their stronger programs, with a great teacher
   
4. Masks: works as therapy as well as expression
   
5. Pottery-ceramics
   
6. Basketweaving
   
7. Dance
   
8. Tai chi
   
9. Cosmetology and human rights (seriously): the same program teaches both skills
   

ARCA currently serves some 318 children, but with the end of city financing in May, 2001, they are unsure what services they will be able to provide.

Av Edméia Matos Lazzarotti, 680
Centro, Betim, MG
32630-080

tel/fax: 31 531 3347

Contacts: Marilene, Carmina.

arcabt@terra.com.br

understanding social services for street kids in Latin America